The National Museum of the American Indian and the Smithsonian Latino Center presented Taíno: A Symposium in Conversation with the Movement on September 8, 2018 to celebrate the exhibition Taíno: Native Heritage and Identity in the Caribbean. Experts representing Indigenous studies, genetic science, anthropology, linguistics, and other academic disciplines examined exhibition themes in dialogue with Taíno/Indigenous Caribbean community leaders and cultural workers.
This session, titled Genetic Science and Genealogy: Recovering Native Ancestry, is a conversation among genetic, DNA, and anthropology experts. This segment features Jada Benn Torres, Associate Professor and Director of the Genetic Anthropology and Biocultural Studies Laboratory, Vanderbilt University.
Jada BENN TORRES, PhD, is a genetic anthropologist, associate professor, and director of the Genetic Anthropology and Biocultural Studies Laboratory at Vanderbilt University. Torres was previously on the faculty at the University of Notre Dame in the department of anthropology. Her primary research area is the Anglophone and Hispanic Caribbean, where she explores genetic ancestry and population history of African and Indigenous Caribbean peoples. Torres has published more than fifteen peer-reviewed publications on various topics related to genetic ancestry, race, and population genetics of Caribbean populations. In addition to genetic research, she draws on the principles of community-based participatory research, which influences the approaches used to guide her research questions. She has also published on the impacts of genetic technologies on contemporary populations with specific regard to issues of race and identity. As part of this research agenda, she has published single-authored works and has collaborated independently with a genetic epidemiologist, cultural anthropologist, and a historian to examine various aspects of the medical and social meanings of genetic data as it pertains to biomedicine, race, and Caribbean history.
This symposium was webcast and recorded live in at the National Museum of the American Indian New York, George Gustav Heye Center on September 8, 2018.
