Five Questions with Julie Lawrence

Julie Lawrence
Postdoctoral Researcher
School of Human Evolution and Social Change 

Lawrence is a postdoctoral research associate in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at ASU. Her research focuses on craniofacial variation in modern humans and in the early hominin fossil record and the methods used to study morphological diversity.

1. Where are you from?

I’m from South London, but spent quite a bit of my childhood living in warmer countries. When my family moved back to England permanently I was 10. I turned to my parents and said, “Really?” We moved from Cyprus on New Year’s Day and it was so grey! But I love London. If I end up moving back to England, London is where I’d want to be. There’s always something to do there. I believe the saying, “If you’re tired of London, you’re tired of life.” It’s such a multi-cultural society. So many different restaurants and things to do, lots of museums, film events and things. I miss London sometimes, but then I go outside and see the sunshine and I’m like, “Oh, OK. I’m fine here.” Arizona and the Southwest generally has unbelievable nature and so much space! 

I studied at University College of London for my undergraduate degree and received my master’s degree and PhD from the University of Cambridge. Cambridge is a beautiful but odd place. I was nervous going to Cambridge because I didn’t think I would fit in with that kind of society — posh dinners and that sort of thing. It’s very Harry Potter-esque. When I first moved there it was a massive change from London because it was so quiet. But it’s really beautiful and has so much history. I really liked my department — it was in the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, so we had a center specifically focused on what I do. I grew to really love Cambridge. Darwin went to university there. We had drinks in front of a painting Isaac Newton actually sat for. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the history. 

2.  What brought you to ASU?

The Institute of Human Origins. In 2015, I was presenting the results of my PhD at the Royal Society at a conference called “Major Transitions in Human Evolution.” The Director of the Institute of Human Origins, Bill Kimbel, came up to me at my poster. Turn’s out, we’re addressing the same questions about how the shape of the face changed across human evolution, but what he was observing with his eyes, I was analyzing using advances in 3D shape analysis. He specifically looks at a species of early human relatives, Australopiths, in Ethiopia, and my PhD was in a related species in South Africa. He asked me if we could potentially put together a project where we would be applying my same methods, but to his particular fossils, and so I said, “Hell yeah!” He said it is in the desert in the middle of nowhere and it’s extremely hot and I said, “Ok, sounds great!” 

3.  What is your favorite part of your work?

That’s difficult! I really love all three major aspects of my work. I did my PhD because I knew I wanted to teach human evolution in the university setting. I love engaging with young people who are interested, as I am, in who we are and where we came from, as an animal. How we fit into the animal kingdom. Some people think it is the necessary evil, but I love the teaching aspect. But I also love fieldwork. I’ve been out working in Kenya and South Africa, and I was hoping to go to Ethiopia with the people here at ASU, but it’s never been politically stable enough in the three years I’ve been here. It’s the combination of the teaching, the fieldwork and the research. I sometimes, unfortunately, get far too obsessed with my methods, but my interest in 3D shape analysis has led to my second postdoc here at ASU. I’m now working to develop 3D resources for the online courses in Biological Anthropology. I’ve really gotten into the possibilities of what you can do with 3D analysis and visualization and how you can use it to teach people about evolution. I’m also working with Chris Stojanowski on dental health and variation in different populations. We want to look at why some people are more likely to have problems with their teeth, how much it matters how healthy your teeth are, and what we can do about it.

4.  Sounds like there’s a lot of computer work going on there. Do you code? 

I try. The Cambridge PhD is a bit strange in that you don’t have any formal training. The PhD has no courses, no coursework, no actual official training so a lot of it is self-taught. I actually had a humanities background, so for my PhD I taught myself all these methods of 3D analysis, and yeah, there’s a lot of mathematics and computer work behind it. On a daily basis, I use five different computer programs just to analyze one scan because none of them do everything I need. The work is challenging but the technology is also challenging. When I got here, I had to find a computer that had the capacity to do what I was trying to do because my laptop kept crashing as it couldn’t handle the scans. In a way it was good, because it forced me to find other resources. I’ve been to the Maker Space in the library and done 3D printing with them. I’ve been looking at renting some time on the cluster. It forces you to seek out what there is on offer here at ASU. I should be better at coding but I do what I need to get by. With my PhD, if I had a problem, I tried to find a way to solve it. I couldn’t find anyone that could do it so I just figured out a way to do it myself. And I feel like I keep going through that. I taught myself how to use R enough to do the analyses I need. I’m now looking to learn enough JavaScript to do what I need to do. It can be tough but it’s best to know the methods yourself and pick up useful skills along the way. 

5.  In preparing for this interview, I found that there is very little about you online. Are you a secret agent?

Mm-hmm. Yes, the bright red hair, I’m very inconspicuous. And my British accent…evil. My evil British accent! One of the things that I’ve always thought about is that I should have more of an online presence. At one point, when…if…I have my own lab, then I probably will. But I think, I’m generally quite a private person, so I don’t like people knowing more about me than I know about them when we meet for the first time. You know?  Like when someone says, “Oh yeah, so when you worked at the zoo…” and you’re, like, how did you know that? So I guess I’m a little bit cautious about it, but I know that it’s more and more a part of being an academic nowadays. Especially here in America, people use Facebook and Twitter more for academia, so you’re at a disadvantage if you’re at a conference and you’re not signed up for the conference Twitter feed — you don’t know things that are going on. But I don’t want to spend my life where I wake up and it’s the first think I check. I’m a very outdoorsy kind of person. It’s probably why I love field work so much. I was away one month in Kenya doing fieldwork and by the time I came back half my hometown had burned down from a massive set of riots that I knew nothing about. When I was away the following year, the Gangnam Style song came out. I’m lucky I missed both of those.