Lab members & Opportunities

Fine line drawing of woman with long hair and eye in center of forehead with cross hatched circle in background

Research Team

Our lab includes a variety of undergraduate and graduate students working on multiple types of research projects.

Director

Dr. Jocelyn Williams

Msc Student

Courtney Geddes

Courtney is working on the Mummies as Microcosms project investigating respiratory disease.

Undergraduate Honours thesis student

Maxime Petit

Maxime will be completing an Honours thesis investigating the isotopic composition of thin sections of tooth to determine infant breastfeeding and weaning practices.

Undergraduate Research Practicum and Assistant

Alexie Roy

Alexie will be responsible for preparing historic bone samples from Kingston Ontario to investigate diet in Irish immigrants.

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Meghan Pidskalny

Meghan will be assisting with the preparation of historic bone material from Kingston for isotopic analysis.

Undergraduate Research Practicum student

Cece Cuthill

Cece will be completing a project analyzing the isotopic composition of hair from Mummies on the central coast of Peru.

No current opportunites for 2025 school year.

For 2026 I will be accepting MSc and

honours thesis students

Honours students to conduct experimental research with stable isotope analysis with a focus on hair growth rates, weaning and breastfeeding, bone pathology.
MSc project investigating diet and movement in ancient Peruvians using mummified hair dating to the Late Horizon (AD 1470-1532) and the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000-1470).

Contact me to learn more

Undergraduate student volunteers

Student sitting in lab chair working at counter

Thanks so much to my student volunteers from 2025: Alexie Roy and Meghan Pidskalny. Alexie helped section hair samples from Peruvian mummies and Meghan helped organize, weigh and repackage bone and tooth samples from Peruvian mummies.

Thanks so much to my student volunteers from 2024: Tasha Godin, Everett McIntyre, Sarah Antymis, Anna Thomson-Roberts. With their help we cleaned, prepped and sampled over 200 hair samples from Peruvian mummies. Thanks also to Emma Hechler for their help with data management.

Former graduate students

2022 Victoria Tait

Isotopes of the Caribbean: An Investigation of Pretreatment and Human Paleodiet at the Escape Site (AD 300-1000) on Saint Vincent, Lesser Antilles

2020 Grant Smith

Postclassic Maya Diet: Stable Isotope and Osteological Analysis of Human Remains from Ka'Kabish, Belize.

2020 Svetlana Komrova (co-supervised with Lisa Janz)

Examining the Diet of Bronze Age Nomadic Pastoralists in Southern Mongolia Using Carbon and Nitrogen Stable Isotope Analysis.

2016 Peter Hammersley

Stable Isotope Analysis of Archaeological Faunal Remains from the Middle Trent Valley, Ontario

2015 Abigail Górkiewicz

Reassessing Bioarchaeological Sex Determination and Research into Gender at the Early Anglo-Saxon Worthy Park Burial Ground in Hampshire, England

2014 Jessica Sutinen

Identifying Non-local Individuals at the Ancient Maya Centre of Minanha, Belize Through the use of Strontium Isotope Analysis

2014 Shannen Stronge

Examining Chronological Trends in Ancient Maya Diet at Minanha, Belize, Using the Stable Isotopes of Carbon and Nitrogen

Williams, J. S., Stronge, S. M., Iannone, G., & Longstaffe, F. J. (2017). Examining chronological trends in ancient Maya diet at Minanha, Belize, using the stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen. Latin American Antiquity, 28(2), 269-287.

2011 Megan Bower

An Osteological and Stable Isotopic Investigation of Diet and Health During the Late Woodland Period at Hidden Spring in Richmond Hill, Ontario