Evolutionary Anthropologist &
Behavioral Scientist

Zachary H. Garfield

Now is an extraordinary time to be a social scientist. As a species, we're crossing a major transition. We're witnessing the final stages of the agricultural and industrial revolutions unfolding in some of the most remote corners of the world. The subsistence lifestyle, where groups of families live together and cooperate to produce their own food and govern themselves, shaped who we are today. And now this way of living is rapidly disappearing.

We have a narrow window to collect high-resolution empirical data among rural, subsistence-based communities, data that speaks to some of our oldest questions about who we are. Alongside this work, we have an opportunity, and I'd argue an obligation, to serve as advocates for these communities as they navigate their changing worlds.

I'm an evolutionary anthropologist and interdisciplinary behavioral scientist. I co-direct The Omo Valley Research Project, a non-profit doing scientific research and community development in southwest Ethiopia. I'm an incoming Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Grinnell College, starting August 2026. Currently, I'm jointly appointed as Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science at University Mohammed VI Polytechnic across the Faculty of Governance, Economics and Social Sciences and the Africa Institute for Research in Economics and Social Sciences. Previously, I was a Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse.

I completed my graduate work in anthropology at Washington State University and my undergraduate work in anthropology and psychology at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.