Carolyn Mason

BA Anthropology, George Mason University

Carolyn Mason is a PhD student in the Medical Anthropology program at Southern Methodist University. She graduated with honors from George Mason University in Virginia, with a BA in Anthropology and minor in Spanish. During her time at George Mason, she produced a podcast called Bigger Fish to Fry, which discusses the food history of enslaved people and how that food tradition affected the health and diet of both enslaved people in the past and their descendants today.

Her graduate research builds on this research project, and will focus on how Black people in South Dallas use food as a way to shape their own health, keeping in mind place-based and cultural foodways. She has joined the Cairns Lab to learn more about how food and the environment shape one another, affecting the bodies of marginalized peoples.

Carolyn is also a recipient of the Mustang Fellowship, which will allow her to focus not only on pushing for equity and transparency at all levels of academia, but on her own research into the role of food in healthways.

Her ultimate goal is to do research that highlights and promotes the voices of those who have not had the opportunity to tell their own stories.

Entered program in 2021

Region of Study:
United States, Black Communities