James Josh Snodgrass

James Josh Snodgrass is an American biological anthropologist and professor at the University of Oregon. He is Co-Director of the university's Global Health Program, Director of the Global Health Biomarker Laboratory and Department Head of Anthropology. His work focuses on human biology, global health, and the biological impacts of social and environmental stressors. He has been an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science(AAAS) since 2013. His work has been published in journals including American Journal of Human Biology, The Lancet, Psychoneuroendocrinology, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Education He completed his highschool from Palo Alto High School in 1990.

Snodgrass received his B.A. in Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1995. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago from 2004 to 2005.

Career Snodgrass began his academic career in anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he also worked as manager of the anthropology laboratories. As part of a forensic team, he helped analyze remains from a mass grave near Vukovar, contributing to war crimes investigations related to the Yugoslav Wars. He co-directs the Global Health minor program and the university’s Center for Global Health. which began in 2007. In 2024, he became co-director of the Homelessness, Policy, and Health project based in Eugene, Oregon. He has collaborated for nearly two decades with the World Health Organization on projects including the Study on global Ageing and adult health (SAGE), the Tunisian Health Examination Survey, and the World Health Survey Plus.

Snodgrass was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for his work in human biology, particularly in areas related to global health, nutrition, energetics, aging, and evolutionary medicine. The project found elevated resting metabolic rates in response to cold exposure, a decline in adaptation over time, and links between subsistence practices, thyroid function, and seasonal variation.

Since 2005, Snodgrass has co-led the Shuar Health and Life History Project in Ecuador. This work investigates how economic development affects health among the Shuar, contributing findings on inflammation, bone density, immune development, and growth patterns. His 2007 co-authored paper “What a drop can do” promoted wider adoption of these methods.

Selected publications