Hi! My name is Dan Major-Smith (formerly just ‘Smith’) - Welcome!
I originally trained as an Evolutionary Anthropologist, and for my PhD (awarded in 2017) I was fortunate enough to conduct fieldwork in the Philippines working with the Agta, one of the last remaining populations of hunter-gatherers. In-between lazing on the beach and napping in a hammock, my main interest was in evolutionary theories of cooperation, which I explored using various experimental games.
Since 2016, I have worked at the University of Bristol in the Population Health Sciences department; originally as a data wrangler/Data Pipeline Manager within the ALSPAC project, and then increasingly in a research role. I am now predominantly a - somewhat accidental - Epidemiologist with interests in causal inference, methods for handling missing data, and combining my epidemiological and evolutionary/anthropological backgrounds.
My current projects include:
- Investigating whether religious/spiritual beliefs and behaviours are associated with health and well-being in the ALSPAC cohort
- Examining associations between access to green space and child cardiometabolic outcomes using a structured life course approach
- Exploring selection bias in COVID-19 research and methods to allieviate these biases
Areas of interest: Epidemiology - Cohort Studies - Causal Inference - Religion - Cooperation - Human Behavioural Ecology - Cultural Evolution - Life-History Theory
How to contact/follow me and explore my research:
Email: dan.smith@bristol.ac.uk
Twitter: @djsmith_90
GitHub: djsmith-90
ORCID: 0000-0001-6467-2023