Jessica Hlay

Biography

Jessica K. Hlay received her PhD in anthropology from Boston University. She is a biocultural anthropologist who pulls from life history theory and cross-cultural perspectives to better understand how perceived experience and environment can impact psychology and physiology. Specifically, she is interested in the way early-life environments, resource availability, and inflammation affect disease avoidance behavior and health outcomes. Hlay’s early work draws from international data collected online, where she assessed objective and perceived disease risk and its impact on psychology and behavior. She also maintains a line of research that assesses the relationship between attachment style and stress response behaviors.

Most recently, Hlay has established a field site alongside collaborators in Utila, Honduras, which is a small island in the Caribbean Sea. This project is known as the Utila Child Health Project, of which she is the Co-Director. There, she works with local families from Utila and mainland Honduras to examine how kids grow and develop based on experienced stress, resource availability and limitations, and physiological immune activation. Ultimately, she is interested in how limited energy can alter our behavior and the way we interact with our environment, and how these behavioral patterns may shift across the lifespan. Specifically, she has investigated how children develop pathogen disgust sensitivity (PDS) throughout childhood, how boys and girls may differ in their levels of PDS, and how food availability and increased rates of inflammation may alter with PDS levels. She is also interested in how these relationships may differ based on experiences of stress, discrimination, and immigration. The Utila Child Health Project also focuses heavily on community engagement and outreach through public presentations, working with local doctors to provide crucial health information to families, and providing children’s programs free of cost.

At the University of Notre Dame, Hlay continues to examine the impact of childhood environment and early-life adversity on health and behavioral outcomes. Working with Dr. Lee Gettler on a project based in the northern Republic of Congo, she plans to assess patterns of childhood physiological and nutritional stress based on environment instability, harshness, and market integration. Hlay will continue to work with cross-cultural observational data, as well as conduct laboratory analyses to assess biomarkers, such as cortisol. With these data, she will examine the intersections of behavior, psychology, and physiology across cultural groups and ages.

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