Robin G Nelson
Biographic Data
| ID | 88982 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robin G Nelson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robin G |
| FAMILY NAME | Nelson |
| SIGNATURE | NELSON R G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Arizona State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9455-4754 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 48 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 164 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 48 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1977 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Adjusting the Aperture
Biological anthropology has long positioned foraging and often pastoralist populations as the most appropriate referent communities for the rigorous study of human behavior and evolution. With this, we have created a framework in which these communities exist in a world system that experiences the passage of time functionally differently than do individuals living in industrialized settings. Such thinking has come to structure our understanding o…
Teaching and Learning Participatory Methods in Anthropology
Participatory methods in cultural anthropology continue to gain popularity. These methods respect community values and promote empowerment and co-creation, enhancing the ethicality and relevance of research findings. Despite their advantages, formal training in participatory methods is limited in anthropology programs, often leaving anthropologists to learn through trial and error with community partners. This article provides an overview of comm…
Mentoring in the social science laboratory
Graduate research programs aim to cultivate students’ abilities to conduct scientific research, including theory development and application, research design, data analysis, and transferable skills like collaboration and communication. Historically, social science training has emphasized individual rather than team-based work. This may limit knowledge creation and negatively impact student confidence and overall mental health. With a growing emph…
How to organise undergraduate lab training
The impacts of undergraduate research experiences are multiple and varied. Working in traditional laboratories (e.g. in the bench sciences) fosters many skills, including independence and critical thinking. Likewise, social science laboratories demonstrate important impacts on students with regard to clarification of career paths, understanding the research process, fostering a systems thinking approach to complex problems, and the ability to ana…
Intro to special issue
In the first of this double issue, we grounded the collection in Mass Culture’s Research in Residence: Arts’ Civic Impact (RinR) project. Aimed at creating a suite of impact measurement frameworks for arts organizations to assess where and how their work has impact, the SSHRC- and Mitacs-funded project embedded four individual graduate student researchers and one team of two graduate students—all from different post-secondary institutions—in arts…
Arts Sector Research in Development
Despite good intentions, academic research often reflects an extractive model and is not always seen as useful within the Canadian arts sector. Mass Culture is a non-profit organization that aims to bring together cultural workers and academics in support of collaborative research and better knowledge mobilization. To that end, their Research in Residence (RinR) initiative involved complex collaborations between the arts sector and academia to ex…
Comparing methods for research mentorship
Recent research finds that a classic approach to research mentorship – the Socratic method – where faculty foster learning by posing probing questions, can also create gender and racial disparities in learning gains. A newer research mentorship method, the Critical Response Process (CRP), may address these shortcomings by giving students control over the flow and quality of feedback they receive. We test and compare the efficacy of these two meth…
Neighborhood Histories
Neighborhoods and the built environment play a vital role in determining our health. But the majority of studies uncovering this relationship are cross‐sectional, which can belie the fact that neighborhoods are shaped by historical processes over decades. In this study, we use white flight, the departure of white residents from an area, as our historical anchor to understand associations between current health outcomes and the histories of neighb…
Value Propositions Provide a Roadmap for Teaching Doctoral Students How to Develop Research Proposals
Writing winning proposals for funding research is an essential skill for doctoral students in the social sciences. Still, most anthropology programs lack formal instruction on this, relying instead on informal mentorship. To advance this, we evaluated the Value Proposition framework in teaching anthropology Ph.D. students to write proposals. Our findings from the feedback from students and faculty in the NSF-funded Cultural Anthropology Methods P…
School Choice and Neighborhood Relationships in Urban Areas
Traditional school enrollment practices, especially in urban areas, were guided by neighborhood boundaries and students had to attend their zoned school. However, there has been an increase of “school choice” policies across the United States, in which parents are allowed to openly enroll their children in schools regardless of boundary restrictions. Concomitantly, there is an increase in loneliness and a decrease in social connectedness in indiv…
Launching New Research
For 40 years, the U.S. National Science Foundation has sponsored intensive summer training sessions on research methods. The Cultural Anthropology Methods Program (CAMP) brings together faculty with varied methodological expertise ranging from Photovoice to study design. During this multi-week program, there are opportunities for communication and cross-fertilization between faculty mentors and student mentees. In this paper, CAMP faculty members…
Scaling up Through Online Research Mentorship – Lessons Learned
The NSF Cultural Anthropology Methods Program (CAMP) first iteration was a hybrid virtual model due to the world pandemic. Drawing on established pedagogical principles, the program combined asynchronous lectures with synchronous online instruction, hands-on activities, and mentorship sessions. The curriculum encompassed a diverse range of activities, including research project development and problem-solving exercises. Despite the benefits of vi…
The New NSF Camp Feedback Method for Research Mentorship
The National Science Foundation's Cultural Anthropology Methods Program (CAMP) aims to cultivate students' ability to craft competitive research proposals. Over three years of CAMP, we tested and iterated different feedback models: the Socratic method, the Value Proposition approach, and the Critical Response Process (CRP). We ultimately designed the NSF CAMP Feedback Method that integrates successful elements from these three models for the pres…
From Gender and Sex to Gender/Sex
Integrating new methods and conceptualizations that recognize the complexity of sex, gender, and their entanglements is critically necessary to advance practice in anthropology. Gender and sex are not static concepts but evolve over time and vary across cultures, influencing societal organization and interpersonal interactions. Recognizing gender and sex as more complex than binary categories is crucial, especially for medical and biocultural ant…
How Teaching Research Design Advances Applied Anthropology
Mastery of research design options offers a powerful tool in the Applied Anthropologist's toolkit. Because policy makers depend upon reliable evidence – and not just debates – applied anthropologists need to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses in data collection methods and designs to offer reasonable and strong approaches to problem solving. Future applied anthropologists may find themselves in situations where a variety of data collection …
Building an Inclusive Big Tent for Methods
Creating a Community of Practice has been central to the vision of the NSF Cultural Anthropology Methods Program (CAMP). The CAMP Community of Practice explores the practices of doing research and teaching research methods, drawing on the great diversity of methods used by anthropologists who collect and analyze cultural data. The methodological diversity now represented in CAMP reflects exciting developments in our discipline, but it also poses …
The plantation system and the roots of the southern rural mortality penalty in the northern Blackland Prairies of Texas
Facilitating Exchanges Between Applied & Academic Anthropologists
Deep hanging out, mixed methods toolkit, or something else? Current ethnographic practices in US anthropology
We use a mix of qualitative and quantitative analyses to examine 1354 survey responses from members of the American Anthropological Association about their practice and teaching of cultural anthropology research methods. Latent profile analysis and an examination of responses to open-ended survey questions reveal distinctive methodological clustering among anthropologists. However, two historical approaches to ethnography remain prominent: deep h…
Intro to special issue
Intro to special issue: How We Work With/in Culture Now: Reimagining Impact Assessment and Governance. An article from journal Culture and Local Governance / Culture et gouvernance locale (How We Work With/in Culture Now: Reimagining Impact Assessment and Governance), on Érudit
Producing the Past
The Canadian private sector also contributes to the heritage commemoration landscape by working with the government and accessing support programs. Arguably, one of the most impactful contemporary examples of the private sector’s heritage commemoration involvement are the Heritage Minutes (Minutes), which are sixty-second videos depicting historical narratives of events and people from Canadian history. Given their notoriety, the production and s…
Theoretical constraints
Prioritize care for a more resilient future
Biocultural Strategies for Measuring Psychosocial Stress Outcomes in Field-based Research
The goal of assessing psychosocial stress as a process and outcome in naturalistic (i.e., field) settings is applicable across the social, biological, and health sciences. Meaningful measurement of biology-in-context is, however, far from simple or straightforward. In this brief methods review, we introduce theoretical framings, methodological conventions, and ethical concerns around field-collection of markers of psychosocial stress that have em…
Epidemic Errors in Understanding Masculinity, Maleness, and Violence
An anthropological approach is needed to counter a rising chorus of biobabble about masculinities, maleness, and violence. Anthropological lenses enable us to examine what we know and what we do not know about issues like testosterone, male primate aggression, and "pink and blue" brains and their relation to masculinities. Pseudoscientific concepts about masculinities and maleness act to justify, bolster, and provoke types of violence against man…
Signaling Safety
Numerous studies use quantitative measures to evaluate retention, advancement, and success in academic settings. Such approaches, however, present challenges for evaluating the lived experiences of academics. Here, we present a qualitative thematic analysis of self-reports of positive and negative experiences that occurred while conducting academic field research. Twenty-six semistructured interviews highlighted two central themes: (1) variabilit…
AAPA Statement on Race and Racism
Race does not provide an accurate representation of human biological variation. It was never accurate in the past, and it remains inaccurate when referencing contemporary human populations. Humans are not divided biologically into distinct continental types or racial genetic clusters. Instead, the Western concept of race must be understood as a classification system that emerged from, and in support of, European colonialism, oppression, and discr…
The Sex in Your Violence
In its broadest conceptualization, violence includes everything from physical assault to the creation and maintenance of institutional structures that are discriminatory and exclusionary. However, violence as a topic of biological and archaeological anthropological inquiry has often been limited to malevolent physical assault perpetrated by men against other men. This is due to an outsized focus on the role that men played in the evolutionary his…
Mapping Intermediality in Performance
This volume examines afresh the impact upon acting and performance of digital technologies. It is concerned with how digital culture combines the traditional ‘liveness’ of theatre with media interfaces and internet protocols. The time and space of the ‘here and now’ are both challenged and adapted, just as barriers between theatre-makers and the ‘experiencers’ of events are broken down. Today many of us are everyday players performing the interco…
Epidemic Errors in Understanding Masculinity, Maleness, and Violence
An anthropological approach is needed to counter a rising chorus of biobabble about masculinities, maleness, and violence. Anthropological lenses enable us to examine what we know and what we do not know about issues like testosterone, male primate aggression, and "pink and blue" brains and their relation to masculinities. Pseudoscientific concepts about masculinities and maleness act to justify, bolster, and provoke types of violence against man…
Beyond the Household
Alloparental or extramaternal care is an integral aspect of human childrearing. This behavior has been explored both as an extension of the primary mother-infant dyad that evolved to meet the demands of altricial offspring and as an economic exchange of energy and resources. Much of this research centers on foraging or small-scale communities and positions the household as the central unit through which to explore negotiations of care. In this re…
Practice-as-research and the Problem of Knowledge
The Justice Process
While research has documented the existence of equity and equality as allocation norms, no research has examined the process by which these norms are achieved. Using data collected by Kahn, Nelson, and Gaeddert (1980: Study 2), group discussions of 24 triads, which had been videotaped, were analyzed. The choice of allocation norm appeared to be determined by who spoke first, who spoke the most, and what norm that person suggested. When equity was…
Biocultural Strategies for Measuring Psychosocial Stress Outcomes in Field-based Research
The goal of assessing psychosocial stress as a process and outcome in naturalistic (i.e., field) settings is applicable across the social, biological, and health sciences. Meaningful measurement of biology-in-context is, however, far from simple or straightforward. In this brief methods review, we introduce theoretical framings, methodological conventions, and ethical concerns around field-collection of markers of psychosocial stress that have em…
Hypervisible and Human
The plantation system and the roots of the southern rural mortality penalty in the northern Blackland Prairies of Texas
Prioritize care for a more resilient future
Reimaging Process in 2016
The year 2016 in biological anthropology represented a return to the methodical study of classic questions and increased integrative team-based research that utilizes multiple methodological approaches. This review is not comprehensive, but rather highlights several papers that reflect trends in four areas of research within biological anthropology: paleoanthropology, primatology, human biology, and anthropological genetics. Methodological innova…
The Need for Experimental Methodology in Intimate Partner Violence
The lack of rigorous evaluations of intimate partner violence (IPV) programs has severely limited our knowledge about what works. However, IPV programs can be rigorously evaluated through randomized controlled trials (RCTs) conducted ethically and safely. This article provides an example of how a RCT to test an IPV preventive intervention-the Enhanced Nurse Family Partnership Study (ENFPS)-was successfully implemented by a partnership of research…
Facilitating Exchanges Between Applied & Academic Anthropologists
Facilitative Effects of Media Violence on Helping
The present experiment was undertaken to test the generality of Tannenbaum and Zillmann's arousal-excitation transfer model. 83 female subjects were insulted, praised, or treated in a neutral manner by the experimenter and then watched a neutral, arousing, or aggressive film clip. After viewing the film the subjects were given the opportunity both to aggress against and later to help the experimenter. Insulted subjects were more aggressive but no…
The Justice Process
While research has documented the existence of equity and equality as allocation norms, no research has examined the process by which these norms are achieved. Using data collected by Kahn, Nelson, and Gaeddert (1980: Study 2), group discussions of 24 triads, which had been videotaped, were analyzed. The choice of allocation norm appeared to be determined by who spoke first, who spoke the most, and what norm that person suggested. When equity was…
A Pilot Study of Client Progress in Short-Term Drug Abuse Treatment
This paper is a pilot study of client progress in two short-term (23-day) drug abuse treatment programs. Client progress is defined as those changes in cognitive functioning, emotional well-being, and social support resources that are th proximate goals of drug abuse treatment. In this study, client progress was measured by changes in cognitive functioning, emotional well-being, and social support domains over the course of treatment. This pilot …
From Twin Peaks, USA, to lesser peaks, UK
Conference review
International audience
Quality Television’
Practice-as-research and the Problem of Knowledge
TV Fiction Exchange
State of play
Robin Nelson's State of play updates and develops the arguments of his influential TV drama in transition (1997). It is equally distinctive in setting analysis of the aesethetics and compositional principles of texts within a broad conceptual framework (technologies, institutions, economics, cultural trends). Tracing 'the great value shift from conduit to content' (Todreas, 1999), Nelson is relatively optimistic about the future quality of TV dra…
Adult health outcomes and their implications for experiences of childhood nutritional stress in Jamaica
With insights from the developmental origins of health and disease paradigm (DOHaD), this study explores the impact of childhood nutritional stress on adult health outcomes in Jamaica. Jamaica experienced a lengthy period of political and economic instability beginning in the postcolonial period of the early 1960s. This study tests whether decreased government spending on public resources and limited access to imported food products during the ea…
Mapping Intermediality in Performance
This volume examines afresh the impact upon acting and performance of digital technologies. It is concerned with how digital culture combines the traditional ‘liveness’ of theatre with media interfaces and internet protocols. The time and space of the ‘here and now’ are both challenged and adapted, just as barriers between theatre-makers and the ‘experiencers’ of events are broken down. Today many of us are everyday players performing the interco…
Television Archives
John Hawks and the Public's Consumption of Biological Anthropology
The Need for Experimental Methodology in Intimate Partner Violence
The lack of rigorous evaluations of intimate partner violence (IPV) programs has severely limited our knowledge about what works. However, IPV programs can be rigorously evaluated through randomized controlled trials (RCTs) conducted ethically and safely. This article provides an example of how a RCT to test an IPV preventive intervention-the Enhanced Nurse Family Partnership Study (ENFPS)-was successfully implemented by a partnership of research…
Residential context, institutional alloparental care, and child growth in Jamaica
OBJECTIVES: Although children are typically raised in familial care networks, not all children have access to kin. Here, I investigate the growth measures of children living in two different residential contexts in Jamaica: institutional care settings and familial homes. METHODS: This cross-sectional study sampled individuals ranging from 5-18 years old, residing in children's homes (N = 113 participants) and familial homes (N = 103 participants)…
Signaling Safety
Numerous studies use quantitative measures to evaluate retention, advancement, and success in academic settings. Such approaches, however, present challenges for evaluating the lived experiences of academics. Here, we present a qualitative thematic analysis of self-reports of positive and negative experiences that occurred while conducting academic field research. Twenty-six semistructured interviews highlighted two central themes: (1) variabilit…
Reimaging Process in 2016
The year 2016 in biological anthropology represented a return to the methodical study of classic questions and increased integrative team-based research that utilizes multiple methodological approaches. This review is not comprehensive, but rather highlights several papers that reflect trends in four areas of research within biological anthropology: paleoanthropology, primatology, human biology, and anthropological genetics. Methodological innova…
Methods without Meaning
Biological anthropology is an intentionally integrative discipline incorporating methods from various fields. As such, data collection techniques ranging from morphometric analyses of hominin fossils to assessments of human cardiac output via fitness trackers are being added to the methodological catalog. This reflects a trend toward an increased reliance on quantifiable data. These data enable researchers to identify ever more finite differences…
AAPA Statement on Race and Racism
Race does not provide an accurate representation of human biological variation. It was never accurate in the past, and it remains inaccurate when referencing contemporary human populations. Humans are not divided biologically into distinct continental types or racial genetic clusters. Instead, the Western concept of race must be understood as a classification system that emerged from, and in support of, European colonialism, oppression, and discr…
Hypervisible and Human
La politique de l'emploi comme instrument de politique culturelle implicite
En 2002, le gouvernement du Nouveau-Brunswick a développé une politique culturelle d’une ampleur sans précédent pour la province. Cette politique devait répondre entre autres aux défis des musées communautaires. Parmi les défis identifiés, on faisait état alors des besoins quant au développement professionnel, à la stabilité financière et à la visibilité au sein de leurs communautés. Cet article étudie en quoi cette stratégie ambitieuse pour le s…
Beyond the Household
Alloparental or extramaternal care is an integral aspect of human childrearing. This behavior has been explored both as an extension of the primary mother-infant dyad that evolved to meet the demands of altricial offspring and as an economic exchange of energy and resources. Much of this research centers on foraging or small-scale communities and positions the household as the central unit through which to explore negotiations of care. In this re…
Theoretical constraints
Prioritize care for a more resilient future
Biocultural Strategies for Measuring Psychosocial Stress Outcomes in Field-based Research
The goal of assessing psychosocial stress as a process and outcome in naturalistic (i.e., field) settings is applicable across the social, biological, and health sciences. Meaningful measurement of biology-in-context is, however, far from simple or straightforward. In this brief methods review, we introduce theoretical framings, methodological conventions, and ethical concerns around field-collection of markers of psychosocial stress that have em…
Sociology (27 works) · Computer Science (17 works) · Psychology (17 works) · Political science (15 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Medicine (8 works) · Geography (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works)