Rate My Professor Rebecca Kinaston

Dr Rebecca Kinaston is a biological anthropologist affiliated with the University of Otago. She earned her PhD in Biological Anthropology and BA (Hons) in Anthropology from the University of Otago. She held postdoctoral positions at the University of Otago and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, and served as a Research Fellow in the Department of Anatomy at the University of Otago from 2017 to 2022.

Dr Kinaston is the Director of BioArch South, a bioarchaeology, archaeology, and forensic anthropology consultancy she founded in 2020. Her research focuses on past human diet, mobility, and health through stable isotope analysis and the examination of human skeletal and dental remains, primarily in the Pacific Islands and Asia. She has worked on the recovery and reburial of kōiwi in Aotearoa since 2008 and serves as Principal Investigator of a Marsden Grant project examining early Māori ancestry and adaptation. She is an affiliate of the Coastal People: Southern Skies Centre of Research Excellence hosted by the University of Otago and has contributed to collaborative research published in journals including Nature Communications.