January 16, 2026

11am - 12pm
Biomedical Sciences Research Building, Room 483

2026 Winter Quarter CRSHE Seminar Series - Dr. Molly Fox
Associate Professor in Anthropology with a joint appointment in Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences

"Mothers, Minds, and Matrilines"

Speaker: Dr. Molly Fox

Speaker Bio: Molly Fox is a biological anthropologist and founder and PI of the UCLA Biological Anthropology of Motherhood Lab. She is an Associate Professor in Anthropology with a joint appointment in Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences. Before joining the faculty at UCLA, she received her PhD in Biological Anthropology from University of Cambridge and completed her postdoctoral training in Psychiatry at UC Irvine School of Medicine. Her research explores how the biopsychosocial experience of pregnancy affects women’s health and health across generations, (i.e., intergenerational processes between grandmothers, mothers, and infants). Her research, grounded in evolutionary and developmental biology, focuses on (a) how social support from family confers health benefits to pregnant women and (b) how women’s reproductive life-histories relate to risk and resilience for Alzheimer’s disease and other chronic diseases.

Talk Title: Mothers, Minds, and Matrilines

Talk Description: Human infants are unusually helpless. Unlike other apes, they remain dependent for many years, and have evolved to recruit care not only from mothers but also from a broader network of helpers, especially grandmothers and other kin. Dr. Fox's work draws upon evolutionary anthropology and psychobiology to examine how cooperative breeding and matrilineal support shape human development. She will describe examples of her group’s studies demonstrating how social support from family confers health benefits to pregnant women, and how a greater diversity of adult caregivers seeds an infant with a more diverse microbiome, as well their studies looking at the ways in which motherhood may confer lifelong cognitive resilience manifesting in lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Fox's work considers how contemporary postindustrial conditions - maternal isolation and reduced kin support - may represent an evolutionary mismatch, and what this suggests for the future of human health.