"Linking Life Sciences and Humanities"
Jennifer Raff, PhD
Associate Professor of Anthropology
University of Kansas
Jennifer Raff is an award-winning author and associate professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas (KU).
Her research focuses on understanding human history through the lens of genetics. She works with Indigenous communities and tribes across North America who wish to use ancient and contemporary DNA as a tool for investigating questions of recent and more distant histories.
Her first book, “Origin: A genetic history of the Americas” was a critical success, described as “an authoritative tale from the trenches told by a fearless scientist,” a “necessary and elegant text,” and by The New York Times as “the book anyone interested in the peopling of the Americas must read.” Origin, which was a New York Times bestseller for two weeks, received multiple awards including the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science (2023).
Raff has also written numerous articles on genetics, history, and human variation for the general public, emphasizing not only the translation of complicated scientific concepts into accessible language, but also the ethics and complicated history of research on these subjects. She was described by the New York Times as “at the forefront of a culture change in our science.”
In 2024 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (General Nonfiction) to support work on her second book, “The Ancients: The untold story of how we became human” under contract with Twelve Books.
She received a PhD in 2008 from Indiana University, with a double major in Molecular, Cellular, Developmental Biology (with a focus on genetics) and Biological Anthropology. She completed postdoctoral work at the University of Utah, Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Molecular Medicine, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University at Chicago, and the University of Texas at Austin, before accepting a position at the University of Kansas in the Anthropology Department, receiving tenure in 2020.
She currently lives in Lawrence Kansas with her husband, Colin McRoberts, their son Oliver, her mother Kathleen Burke, and Alu The Dog, a 120 pound German Shepherd/Rottweiler mix.