Assistant Professor Faculty Position Department of Anthropology, focus of Healthy Aging

The Anthropology Department at Boston University’s College of Arts and Sciences invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Biocultural Biodemography of Aging. This position is part of BU’s major investment in convergent research, bringing together bold ideas, deep expertise, and perspectives from across disciplines to take on society’s most critical challenges. We seek a biological anthropologist specializing in the evolution of human aging, senescence, and life‑course health trajectories.

Using evolutionary, comparative, and life‑course approaches, the successful candidate will investigate how biological, environmental, and social factors interact to shape aging, longevity, and disease across generations. The position will help bridge biological and population approaches to aging, with opportunities to apply computational and AI methods to large biomedical datasets and collaborate across disciplines.

This cluster hire builds on BU’s strength in Health Across the Lifespan, an area of significant expertise and opportunity across the University. BU is home to renowned studies of aging including the Framingham Heart Study and New England Centenarian Study, as well as innovative interdisciplinary research centers focused on the demography and economics of population aging, Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, the biology of aging, and more.

The Future of Healthy Aging draws on this foundation, bringing together faculty from anthropology, biology, business, communications, epidemiology, law, physical therapy, sociology, and surgery to pursue transformative research questions about how we age and the biological, cultural, environmental, technological, legal, and social factors that shape healthy aging as well as the structural factors that prevent some from aging well. The cluster hire will add new ideas, methods, and perspectives to this work, connecting fundamental discovery, population health, and translational research to advance healthier aging across the life course and to meet the challenges of an aging global population.

The Department of Anthropology is a globally engaged and interdisciplinary community of scholars dedicated to understanding the biological, cultural, social, and environmental factors that influence health and human‑wellbeing trajectories from early life through older adulthood. Drawing on strengths in sociocultural anthropology, biological anthropology, archaeology, and environmental anthropology, faculty examine how health, aging, care, inequality, and human adaptation are experienced and understood across diverse populations and cultural contexts.

Since its founding in 1839, Boston University has embraced a mission of openness and access, becoming one of the first universities in the nation to welcome all students of ability regardless of race, gender, or creed. That tradition shapes our enduring commitment to academic freedom, free inquiry, and the robust exchange of ideas. Please visit https://www.bu.edu/values/ to learn more about our shared values.

We seek scholars who will contribute to our community of teachers and researchers through excellence in innovative scholarship, engaged teaching, and participation in the intellectual life of the University. Boston University provides an environment where faculty and students work together across disciplines, perspectives, and experiences to advance knowledge and address society’s most pressing challenges.

Candidates should have a PhD or equivalent degree in Anthropology or a related field, a demonstrated ability to lead an independent research program, and a commitment to excellence and innovation in teaching, education, and mentorship of…