Mackie O'Hara-Ali

Dr. Mackie O’Hara joins the Dunn Lab in the Department of Sociology as a Research Assistant Professor, overseeing the research pertaining to children’s teeth. Mackie completed a master’s (2016) and doctorate (2021) degrees in Biological Anthropology at The Ohio State University, where she focused on understanding how stress events, climate, evolutionary history, and diet influence enamel thickness and tooth shape in both extant primates and fossil hominins.

As a post-doctoral researcher at University of Kent (2022-2024), she worked to identify the cellular mechanisms that produce variation in enamel thickness within human ancestors and modern humans. Mackie is passionate about understanding how early life experience is embodied in children’s teeth and how those teeth can be leveraged to provide insights about future health, resiliency, and growth and development.