Elizabeth Holdsworth is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology. She is a biocultural anthropologist studying the early life determinants of health disparities. She conducts research with mothers and infants to better understand how social inequality differentially exposes people to adverse and stressful environments and its impact on infant growth and development. Her research uses frameworks from evolutionary theory like developmental plasticity and from epidemiology like the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD). Some of the biological mechanisms she studies include the epigenome, microbiome, and neuroendocrine biomarkers like cortisol. She also studies human milk composition in association with the growth and development of breastfeeding infants.