Robert L. Tennyson, PhD

I am a biological anthropologist studying how psychosocial stress shapes human health and aging across diverse contexts — from survivors of the American War in Vietnam to Division I student-athletes in the United States. By working with populations with very different life experiences, environments, and behavioral patterns, I aim to identify the pathways through which stress influences biological aging in modern humans and to anticipate emerging health inequities across populations. This comparative approach enables me to separate the effects of stress from the many social, ecological, and behavioral factors that often co-vary with it, making it possible to identify the mechanisms linking stress to aging.

​

At the same time, this variation provides insight into our evolutionary past. Humans evolved to rely on social networks, flexible cognition, and subjective experience to navigate complex worlds — adaptations that ultimately allowed our species to occupy nearly every region of the planet. By examining how challenges to these psychosocial systems affect biological aging today — both through direct physiological changes and indirect behavioral or social pathways — my research helps reconstruct the pressures our ancestors faced and the physiological systems that evolved to meet them.