What we did in 2011

The year of 2011 was very productive for all of us involved in the BEMICELU project.

Publications
Hannah was the first author of two papers published on the American Journal of Human Biology. Inês has one paper in press on Collegium Antropologicum. See details of our publications here bemicelu.blogspot.com/p/publications-on-maya-issues.html

Presentation in conferences
We presented our work at the Human Biology Association Annual Meeting, in Minneapolis; at a conference on 'Anthropolohy and Health' in Dubrovnik; and at the SSHB Symposium 'The Human Biology of Jim Tanner', in Cambridge.

PhDs updates
Hannah has submitted her PhD dissertation and will have her viva in February or March 2012. Well done, Hannah. Hugo has been conducting fieldwork in Merida since October and is planning to keep going for 6 months more. Before Christmas he had been able to collect data from 30 family clusters (i.e. child, mother and grandmother). This is a great achievement.

Funding
Just before Christmas Hugo got extra funding from CONACYT. This will speed up some aspects of the fieldwork because it will be able to pay for another fieldworker.

Visits to Mexico
Ines and Barry visited Merida in July. We met with Fede, Hugo and the rest of the team at CINVESTAV. Ines went back in November to give a talk, to participate a bit on the fieldwork and to meet with the rest of the team.

Sabbaticals and visitorships
Fede and his wife Tere are coming to Loughborough to do a 1-year of sabbatical with Ines and Barry. Also, Adriana will start a 4-month visit to work with Ines and finish her Masters dissertation. Mexico is coming to Loughborough!!

Next year
We need to keep publishing steadily and, above all, write a couple of solid grant proposals focusing on the energy expenditure issues. Hopefully we will have a go on some epigenetics.



Three generations of Maya 

 Happy New Year to all. Thanks for reading our blog.