Emily Brennan has been awarded a Rust Family Foundation grant for her dissertation research focusing on how stress impacted people's health in 13th - 18th century Berlin.  Below is a summary provided by Emily about her research:

"This project will explore patterns in health from the 13th to 18th century in Berlin during a time of urban growth, climatic variability during the Little Ice Age, and cultural changes from the Reformation. By utilizing a life course framework, we can better capture frailty and estimate health by examining the timing and pattern of physiological stress responses that manifest across a lifespan. Traditional skeletal stress markers will be paired with measurements of cortical bone from radiological scans to evaluate how biological/structural/cultural factors affect morbidity and mortality profiles for both adults and non-adults. By investigating stress response within a life course framework, this project will contribute to the understanding of mechanisms that drive the impacts of stress, how they are embodied and embedded in different contexts."