Stefani A. Crabtree is an early career scholar combing archaeology and ecology to understand the past of human-ecosystem interactions. She is Associate Professor in Socio-Environmental Modeling in the Department of Environment and Society of the Quinney College of Natural Resources at Utah State University after having received early tenure and is External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Her research applies complex systems science modeling methodologies (such as agent-based modeling and network science) to problems in social science and ecology. Current research topics include the human place in ecosystems worldwide, the ability to use the archaeological past to calibrate our understanding of human resilience, and the feedbacks between ecosystem health and human health. Crabtree has published in general science and disciplinary journals across social science and ecology, including PNAS, Ecological Modelling, American Antiquity, Physics Today, Human Ecology, Journal of Archaeological Science, and Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. From 2016-2018 she was a post-doctoral researcher in the Human Environmental Dynamics laboratory at the Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Crabtree received her two Ph.D.s about seven years ago; one from Washington State University (Anthropology, 2016) and one from the Université de Franche-Comté (Maison des Sciences de l’Homme et l’Environnement, 2017).

Stefani grew up in the small town of Bend, Oregon, and before college had never set foot out of the continental United States. As an undergraduate she studied abroad in Paris, taking courses in Art History, Egyptology and the Archaeology of Islam at Paris Sorbonne Michelet. She was a Watson Fellow in 2004-2005, living in New Zealand, Samoa, India and Vietnam doing a multi-site ethnography on how women of indigenous cultures use traditional medicine in pregnancy and childbirth. In graduate school Stefani has been an NSF graduate research fellow and a Chateaubriand fellow.

Stefani is interested in how complexity science can help us understand the archaeological past. Follow her on bluesky @StefaniCrabtree