ASHB Annual General Meeting
The AGM is usually incorporated into the Annual Scientific Conference.

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Agenda
The ordinary business of the Annual General Meeting is as follows:

• to confirm the minutes of the last preceding Annual General Meeting and of any general meeting held since that meeting
• to receive from the Executive Committee the Annual Report and statement of Annual Accounts for the preceding financial year
• to determine the entrance fee and annual subscription
• to elect the officers of the ASHB committee and confirm the election of the ordinary Executive Committee members.
  

Meet the Committee

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Georgia Stannard

President

Dr Georgia Stannard is a Lecturer at La Trobe University in Melbourne. Her research interests fall within both modern and palaeo time frames, focusing broadly on the interaction between Aboriginal Australians and their environments. She is particularly interested in human adaptation to Australian cold climates, with current research projects located within Tasmania and the Southern Australian Alps. Complementing this is her interest in reconstructing past environments, investigating the intersection of landscapes, ecology and people. Dr Stannard is an emerging national leader in archaeological education, extending from Primary through to Tertiary contexts, and is co-editor and project director of the Australian Archaeological Skills Passport. She has a strong research focus on developing archaeology-specific pedagogies within Australia, strongly linked to the decolonisation of the discipline and the recentering of Traditional knowledges within our teaching practices.

David Coall

Vice President

Dr David Coall is a biological anthropologist. He holds the position of Senior Lecturer and Biomedical Science Course Coordinator in the School of Medical and Health Sciences at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia. David completed his PhD in the School of Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia and his Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in the Centre for Cognitive and Decision Sciences at The University of Basel, Switzerland.  After returning to UWA as a researcher in the School of Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, in 2010 David moved to his current position. He has authored more than 45 publications across the fields of evolutionary anthropology, paediatrics, cognitive science, mental health, and maternal and child health.  His research focuses on applying evolutionary theory to understanding the complex inter-generational influences on health and behaviour within families. He has two main lines of research, one exploring the impact the childhood environment has on subsequent growth, development and reproduction and the second examines the roles grandparents play in families and its health consequences. He is currently examining the experiences, needs and health of grandparents who are raising their own grandchildren. His work is now being translated into support services for people in low resource family situations.

Varsha Pilbrow

Secretary

Varsha Pilbrow is an academic in the department of Anatomy at the University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on dental palaeoanthropology and skeletal biology. With the support of grants from the Leakey Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Sciences, the National Science Foundation, USA, NHMRC and ARC, Varsha’s research is lab-based and has taken her to museums in Africa, Europe, Asia and North America; fossil hominid localities in Tanzania, South Africa and India; and archaeological sites in the Republic of Georgia. Her palaeoanthropological research helps to understand the processes governing the diversification of populations into species and subspecies by using dental models from extant apes to address questions of speciation and evolutionary diversification in fossil hominids. Her bioarchaeological research uses ancient skeletal remains to address questions of human movement and migration with regards to demography, health, diet, pathology and social identity. Her teaching focus is on human topographic anatomy and she supervises research higher degree students in biological anthropology.

Sarah Croker

Treasurer

Dr Sarah Croker is a researcher and lecturer in forensics and anatomy at the University of Sydney.

Stacey Ward

Social Media Representative

Dr Stacey Ward is a Lecturer in Biological Anthropology at the Australian National University. Her research is primarily based in Southeast Asia and has focused on topics such heavy metal exposure among early Bronze Age metallurgists in Thailand, cremation practices in historic Laos, and the relationship between health and social inequality in Iron Age Thailand. Stacey also conducts research exploring ethics and education in Biological Anthropology, and has previously assisted with the repatriation of Indigenous skeletal remains. In a past life, Stacey worked as a contract archaeologist. She has archaeological and bioarchaeological field experience in New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Israel and Peru. 

Tanya Smith

Committee Member

Tanya Smith is a Professor in the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution and the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research at Griffith University. She explores human development, evolution, and behaviour using dental remains. Her research has helped to identify of the origins of a fundamental human adaptation: the costly yet advantageous shift from a “live fast and die young” strategy to the “live slow and grow old” strategy that has helped to make us one of the most successful mammals on the planet. Tanya's popular science book, The Tales Teeth Tell, was published by MIT Press in 2018. She also conducts research on how women are experiencing and influencing academic culture, co-founding a professional mentoring network for women associated with the American Association of Biological (Physical) Anthropologists in 2008. ​​

Sian Halcrow

Committee Member

Dr Siân Halcrow is a Professor of Biological Anthropology at the University of Otago. Her research interests lie in understanding major human transitions in the past through the experiences of the most vulnerable people in the population: infants and children. She also contributes to topical issues in her discipline through her work on the ethics of the study of human remains. Since 2007, Siân has had more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, and has gained grants from the Marsden Fund, Australian Research Council, FONDOCYT, Fullbright NZ, Wenner-Gren Foundation, and National Geographic. She is the Co-Editor-In Chief for Bioarchaeology International, and her co-edited book, The Mother-Infant Nexus in the Past: Small Beginnings, Significant Outcomes (Springer) has been used for the Research Excellence Framework (UK). Siân was the recipient of the Rowheath Trust Award and Carl Smith Research Medal, and the NZ Association of Scientists Hill Tinsley Medal.

Ashley McGarry

New Zealand Student Representative

Ashley McGarry is a PhD student at the University of Auckland. Her current research centres on the analysis of burned and commingled remains in Middle East using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and X-Ray Fluorescence.

Karen Cooke

Australian Student Representative

Karen Cooke is currently a PhD Candidate at the Australian National University. Her current research investigates the changes to bone microstructure as a result of treponemal infection, primarily through histological analysis of undecalcified archaeological human bone.