Kristopher M. Smith
PhD, University of Pennsylvania
Assistant Professor
Evolutionary Anthropology
Research Interests
Applied anthropology; Climate change adaptation; Collective action; Cooperation; East Africa; Friendship; Group relations; Infectious disease; Mobility; Natural resource management
Current Research
I am an evolutionary anthropologist interested in how communities work together to respond and adapt to cultural and environmental change. My research examines two sides of this problem: why and how do people cooperate with one another, and how do people innovate, adopt, and modify solutions to these problems. Drawing on theory and methods from human behavioral ecology, cultural evolution, evolutionary psychology, and disease ecology, I investigate big questions about human sociality in applied contexts. I maintain an active presence at two field sites in East Africa.
Tanga Sociality and Fisheries Project: Since 2021, I have been directing the Tanga Sociality and Fisheries Project in the Tanga Region of northern Tanzania. The project examines the inter-relationship between sociality and fishery usage: How do patterns of fishery usage influence people’s social networks, and how do people’s social networks influence their fishery usage and management. The goal of the project is to leverage these relationships to improve the management of open-access fisheries and the well-being of the people who depend on them. A major focus of the project has been on long-distance relationships, finding that having friends in other villages that access the same fishery can encourage participation in managing the shared fishery.
Adaptation to Climate-Sensitive Diseases: Since 2024, I have been working with WSU Global Health Kenya to study how communities in Kenya are adapting to the increased burden from climate-sensitive diseases. As climate change intensifies and the climate of East Africa gets hotter and wetter, the ecologies of vectors such as mosquitoes, tsetse flies, and ticks are changing, and with them, the epidemiological patterns of the diseases they carry. Using a mixed-methods approach, I study how camel pastoralists in northern Kenya are adapting to changes in infectious diseases, how these adaptations compete with responses to other threats such as conflict and food insecurity, and how successful adaptations can be upscaled.
Courses Taught
ANTH101 [DIVR] Introduction to Anthropology: Explores what it means to be human through biological anthropology (human evolution), archaeology (material remains of past peoples), sociocultural anthropology (present peoples), and linguistics (language).
ANTH260 [BSCI] Introduction to Biological Anthropology: Evidence for human evolution; evolutionary explanations of human and primate variation; techniques of biological anthropology.
ANTH268 [BSCI] Sex, Evolution, and Human Nature: Human sexuality, relations across sexes and genders, parenting, cooperation, and violence compared across cultures and to nonhuman primates, using evolutionary and biocultural perspectives.
Selected Publications
Smith, K.M., Pisor, A.C., Aron, B., Bernard, K., Fimbo, P., Machano, H., Kimesera, R., Rubens, J., Slade, L., Sobo, J., Thani, A., Borgerhoff Mulder, M. (2025). Long-distance friends and collective action in fisheries management. Conservation Letters, 18(1), e13073
Pisor, A.C., Borgerhoff Mulder, M., & Smith, K.M. (2024). Long-distance social relationships can both undercut and promote local natural resource management. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 379, e2022069.
Smith, K.M., Pisor, A.C., Aron, B., Bernard, K., Fimbo, P., Kimesera, R., & Borgerhoff Mulder, M. (2023). Friends near and afar, through thick and thin: Comparing contingency of help between close-distance and long-distance friends in Tanzanian fishing villages. Evolution and Human Behavior, 44(5), 454-465.
Smith, K.M., & Apicella, C.L. (2022). Hadza hunter-gatherers are not deontologists and do not prefer deontologists as social partners. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 101, e104314.
Smith, K.M., & Apicella, C.L. (2020). Partner choice in human evolution: The role of cooperation, foraging ability, and culture in Hadza campmate preferences. Evolution and Human Behavior, 41(5), 354-366.
Smith, K.M., Larroucau, T., Mabulla, I.A., & Apicella, C.L. (2018). Hunter-gatherers maintain assortativity in cooperation despite high-levels of residential change and mixing. Current Biology, 28, 3152-3157
