Faculty Profile: Dr. John H. Relethford
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Dr. John H. Relethford
(Distinguished Teaching Professor) is a biological anthropologist who received
his Ph.D. in anthropology in 1980 from the State University of New York at
Albany. Prior to his current position at SUCO, he held the position of
Post-Doctoral Research Scientist with the Department of Genetics at the
Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research. He also served as Manager of
Injury and Disability Surveillance in the Division of Epidemiology at the New
York State Department of Health. In addition, he has served as an adjunct
faculty in the Departments of Anthropology and Epidemiology at SUNY at Albany
and continues to hold an adjunct position in the Department of Anthropology at
the State University of New York at Binghamton. Dr. Relethford is a recipient
of the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching (1994-95), and was the
inaugural winner of the SUNY-Oneonta Susan Sutton Smith Prize for Academic
Excellence in 1995. He was promoted to the rank of Distinguished Teaching
Professor, the highest rank in the State University system, in 1998.
In addition to teaching
introductory biological anthropology, Dr. Relethford also teaches courses on
human variation, human evolution, and anthropological genetics. Dr.
Relethford's major interests are in the fields of anthropological genetics,
human variation, and modern human origins. Much of his research has focused on
the reconstruction of history from patterns of modern biological variation. His
past work has also included studies of migration, quantitative genetics, child
growth, epidemiology, and aging. His current work focuses on three topics:
global patterns of craniometric variation, the evolutionary history of Irish
populations and the origin of modern humans. These projects have been funded by
grants from the National Science Foundation (Ireland) and the SUNY Graduate
Initiative program (modern humans).
Dr. Relethford has over 170
publications, including several books, 82 peer-reviewed journal articles, and
19 book chapters. His introductory text, The
Human Species: An Introduction to Biological Anthropology (McGraw-Hill,
2013), is in its ninth edition. He has also written Genetics and the
Search for Modern Human Origins (John Wiley & Sons, 2001), and Reflections
of Our Past: How Human History is Revealed in Our Genes, which was
published in April 2003 (Westview Press), and awarded the 2004 W.W. Howells
Book Prize of the Biological Anthropology Section of the American
Anthropological Association. He has also written a textbook entitled Human
Population Genetics (2012), published by Wiley-Blackwell. He is
also a coauthor of the textbook Human
Biological Variation, now in
its second edition (Oxford University Press, 2011). Other significant
publications include "The use of quantitative traits in the study of human
population structure (Yearbook of Physical Anthropology, 1982, with F.C.
Lees)," "Detection of differential gene flow from patterns of
quantitative variation (Human Biology, 1990, with J. Blangero),"
"Craniometric variation, genetic theory, and modern human origins (American
Journal of Physical Anthropology, 1994, with H.C. Harpending),
"Anthropometric variation and the population history of Ireland" (American Journal of Physical Anthropology,
1995, with M.H. Crawford), "Models and predictions, and the fossil record
of modern human origins" (Evolutionary
Anthropology 8:7-10, 1999), “Boas and beyond: Migration and
craniometric variation” (American Journal
of Human Biology 16:379–386, 2004), “Global patterns of isolation by
distance based on genetic and morphological data” (Human Biology 76:449–513, 2004), “Genetic evidence and the modern
human origins debate” (Heredity
100:555–563, 2008), “Geostatistics
and spatial analysis in biological anthropology” (American Journal of Physical Anthropology 136:1–10, 2008), and
"Race and global patterns of phenotypic variation" (American Journal of Physical
Anthropology 139:16-22, 2009).
Dr. Relethford has served as
President, Past-President, and Vice President of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists,
and as a member of the Executive Committee of the organization. He has also
served as Vice President and President of the American
Association of Anthropological Genetics. He is currently Chair-Elect of
Section H (Anthropology) of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Relethford currently serves
on the Editorial Boards of American
Anthropologist, Human Biology, the online journal PLoS One, and the online
journal PaleoAnthropology.
He has also served as an Associate Editor for the American
Journal of Physical Anthropology, the Journal
of Human Evolution, and Human
Heredity, and served on the editorial boards of the journals Current Anthropology,
and the Yearbook
of Physical Anthropology.
Courses
currently taught by Dr. Relethford:
ANTH 130
Introduction to Biological Anthropology
ANTH 233
Race, Genetics, and Variation
ANTH 239
History of Human Evolution
ANTH 330
Paleoanthropology
ANTH 332
Human Population Genetics
ANTH 333
Human Biological Variation
ANTH 393
History of Anthropological Thought
E-Mail: John.Relethford@oneonta.edu