In today's episode, we interview Dr. Malorie Albee. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Northern Michigan University with a PhD from Ohio State University. We learn about her career path, and the various moves she and her family have made over the course of the past years.

We learn about the PhD program at Ohio State, and the structure of coursework, candidacy exam, proposal, and dissertation. We were surprised to learn about the written part of the candidacy exam, which requires the candidates to write five 20-page essays between Monday 8am and Friday 5pm of the exam week.

She studies the bioarchaeology of the human foot skeleton. We learn about what the bones in skeletal feet can teach us about the impact of our sedentary lifestyles, and why bioarchaeologists have perhaps not spent as much time on exploring this part of skeletal remains.

We talk about Malorie's experience in applying for a job after the PhD: when she started to apply, the type of positions she applied for, and what the campus interview is like for the academic positions she interviewed for.

Malorie also has a 6-year-old son, and we discuss how her experience as an academic parent has shaped some of the work she has done in her campus community: from advocating for lactation spaces that are not on the other end of campus, to setting an example as a mother and academic to her son and others.

We round off with her best advice for PhD candidates, how she sets boundaries to work, the impact of COVID-19 on her PhD and data collection, and what a day looks like in the life for her.

References

• Diagnosing tarsal coalition in medieval Exeter
• Tarsal metric trends over the Medieval-Post-Medieval transition in London