Dr. Alison Murray

Bio

My research examines (1) how life history, metabolism, and physical activity affect human bone and body composition across the lifecycle, and their roles in shaping age-related disease risk, and (2) the impact of skeletal variation on locomotor biomechanics among hominins.

Interests

• biological anthropology
• functional anatomy
• metabolism
• healthy aging
• skeletal biology
• life history
• evolutionary biomechanics

Courses

• ANTH 250 Biological Anthropology

• ANTH 352 Human Osteology

• ANTH 357 Evolutionary Biology of Contemporary Health

• ANTH 358 Biology of Human Skeletal Variability

• ANTH 456/552E Evolutionary Anthropology

Selected publications

(Previously published under the name Macintosh)

• 2024 (in review) Longman DP, Murray A, Brown EL, Lewis C, Millis RM, Novak T, Muehlenbein MP, Wells JCK, Stock JT. Life history trade-offs between immune function, storage, maintenance and reproduction in energetically stressed athletes. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA.
• 2023 Murray AA, MacKinnon M, Carswell TMR, Giles JW. The effect of longitudinal femoral and tibial curvature on the kinematics of locomotion in steep terrain. Front Ecol Evol 11:1220567
• 2022 Murray A. Variability and the form-function framework in evolutionary biomechanics and human locomotion. Evo Hum Sci 4:e129.
• 2021 Murray A, Erlandson M. Tibial cortical and trabecular parameters together can pinpoint the timing of impact loading relative to menarche in premenopausal females. Am J Hum Bio 2021:e23711.
• 2021 Longman DP, Murray AA, Roberts R, Oakley S, Wells JCK, Stock JT. Female ultra-endurance athletic performance reflects sex-specific evolutionary energetics. Evol Hum Sci 3:e222.
• 2020 Murray AA, Stock JT. Functionally-related muscle force interacts with stature to influence polar second moments of area in the lower limb among adult women. Am J Phys Anthropol 173:258-275.
• 2019 Longman DP, Macintosh AA, Roberts R, Oakley S^b, Wells JCK, Stock JT. Ultra-endurance athletic performance suggests energetics drive human morphological thermal adaptation. Evol Hum Sciences 1:e16.
• 2019 Macintosh AA, Stock JT. Intensive terrestrial or marine locomotor strategies are associated with inter- and intra-limb bone functional adaptation in living female athletes. Am J Phys Anthropol 168:566-581.
• 2018 Macintosh AA, Wells JCK, Stock JT. Maternal investment, maturational rate of the offspring, and mechanical competence of the adult female skeleton. Evol Med Public Health 2018:167-189.
• 2017 Macintosh AA, Pinhasi R, Stock JT. Prehistoric women's manual labor exceeded that of athletes through the first 5500 years of farming in Central Europe. Sci Adv 3:eaao3893.