Biocultural Lab for the study of Inequality and Social Stress (BLISS)

At University of Toronto, Department of Anthropology

BLISS is a research group dedicated to advancing the understanding of human stress, sociality, and agency across contexts and stages in the life course. We work with minimally invasive biomarkers, anthropometrics, health data, and qualitative/mixed-ethnographic methods to understand how social inequality and diverse forms of social stress influence meaning-making, biological outcomes and processes (developmental, neuroendocrine, inflammatory), health, and well-being. Interested students (undergraduate and graduate) and post-doctoral scholars should contact me for more information about joining BLISS. At this time, BLISS is a research group with a forthcoming behavioural endocrinology wet lab. Contact Delaney if you are interested in joining and have interests in mixed methods, hormones x behaviour, care, community, and health.

Things We Have Been Up To In The Lab

Creating a survey for SAWA Project in The GTA

Biocultural neuroendocrinology wet lab renovation complete!

Lab group dinner!

Biocultural neuroendocrinology wet lab renovation complete!

Lab Members and Affiliates

Delaney Glass, Principal Investigator and Lab Director

Dominick Roussel, Ph.D. Student

Dominick Roussel is a PhD student in Evolutionary Anthropology under the supervision of Dr. Glass in the BLISS lab. She completed her Master’s in Evolutionary Anthropology under the supervision of Dr. Samson in the Sleep and Human Evolution Lab (SHEL) where she researched sleep in autistic individuals. She previously also completed her Honours Bachelor of Science at the University of Toronto with a specialization in Evolutionary Anthropology and a major in Socio-Cultural Anthropology. Dominick is looking to improve sleep quality in adults diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder by using behavioural interventions to improve sleep and overall wellbeing.

Lina Hammad, Project Manager

Lina Hammad is a Project Manager/Coordinator with The Social Safety and Wellbeing Among Adolescents (SAWA) Study in our lab. With keen interest and experience in community-based research, her background has been in coordinating social and humanitarian projects targeting vulnerable people such as children, women and refugees in humanitarian and development contexts. Her professional experience has primarily been focused in the area of program coordination, reporting, monitoring and evaluation, child rights and research with academic organizations, international non-profits, donor agencies and United Nations organizations. Through these organizations, she has worked both at the grassroots community level and at national and regional levels. Through McMaster University, she has supported a mixed-methods study focused on assessing the mental health and well-being needs of newcomer and refugee children and their families to Canada. She has also contributed to a community-based research project, partially funded by University of Toronto, with youth from Middle East and North Africa living in Ontario to learn how their social environments shape their intersectional identities and to support developing relevant promotion interventions. Lina was a board member volunteer with the Canadian Evaluation Society, Ontario Chapter. She holds a Masters degree with honors in Development Management from the University of Wales, Swansea, U.K.

Asma Makkouk, Graduate RA

Asma Makkouk is a Work-Study Research Assistant with the Social Safety and Wellbeing Among Adolescents (SAWA) Study in our lab. She is currently pursuing a Master of Arts degree in the Developmental and Psychological Education program at OISE, University of Toronto, under the supervision of Dr. Becky Chen in the Multilingualism and Literacy Lab. Her research interests focus on enhancing language and literacy skills among bilingual and multilingual children. She is also interested in the broader areas of mental health and newcomer experiences.

Claire Ferreira, Post Bach Member

Claire Ferreira recently completed her Honors Bachelor of Science at the University of Toronto in Evolutionary Anthropology and Archaeology. She previously worked on an independent research project under the supervision of Dr. Glass looking at the relationship between internalized mental health disorders, bone density, and stress hormones. She is currently working on developing methods and protocols for the wet-lab. Her research interests broadly include understanding how social stress and hormones affect skeletal development, especially in underrepresented communities.

Sana Ahmed, Undergraduate Member

Sana Ahmed is an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto. She is currently working towards an Honours Bachelors of Arts, double majoring in Socio-Cultural Anthropology with a focus in Medical Anthropology, and Environmental Geography. Her past experiences include volunteering in community programs, which has shaped her passion for understanding and contributing to bettering the social fabric. Additionally, her archaeology experience in the Castelo Archaeological Project has fueled her interest in understanding the relationship between biomarkers and sociality. As such, her research interests are focused on community-engaged research, ethnography, and the social determinants of health and illness. Sana is assisting with projects related to social safety and health among adolescents.

Ammar Adlan, Undergraduate Member

Ammar Adlan is an Undergraduate Research Assistant Fellow in BLISS,where he is
contributing to the Social Safety, Agency, and Wellbeing among Adolescents (SAWA) Study. He
is pursuing a Specialist degree in Biology at the University of Toronto. His research interest is to
bridge the gap between human biology and anthropological factors, with a focus on how social
and familial relationships influence adolescent development and health. He is especially
interested in how lived experiences become embodied in physiological and psychosocial
outcomes, connecting biological data to broader understandings of well-being.

Nay El Rahi, Graduate Student Affiliate

Nay El Rahi is a feminist writer, researcher and political organizer with over a decade of experience working across journalism, research and advocacy for social justice, namely gender justice. Nay has been a researcher at The Arab Institute for Women (AiW) at the Lebanese American University since 2021, and a PhD student in anthropology at the University of Toronto since 2024. Her work focuses on emerging socialities under conditions of perpetual crises and violence; loss, grief, and selfhood in Lebanon. In BLISS, she is contributing to the Remaking Adolescence project focused on multigenerational understandings and enactments of adolescence in Jordan.

Alexa Fairclough, Post Bach Member

Alexa Fairclough completed her BA at the University of Toronto's Department of Anthropology. She has a background in implementation-focused research designed to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion within academia. Previously, she was a research assistant at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education from 2021-2022 and 2023-2024, as well as a 2023-2024 fellow within the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. She is interested in community-engaged research, social disparities, ethnography, policy, climate change, vector ecology, archives, and visual culture.

Melani Vevecka, Undergraduate Member

Melani is a third-year Anthropology and Political Science student at the University of Toronto, working toward her Bachelor of Science. Her research focuses on bodily autonomy, U.S. constitutional law, and state governance. Having grown up in multiple different countries, she has seen firsthand how politics and governance shape not just national policies but also societal values and the way people think. This global perspective informs her research and fuels her passion for law, politics, and how legal systems shape personal and collective freedoms. Melani is working on an independent research project focused on bodily autonomy.

Dayton Hui, Undergraduate Member

Dayton Hui is a research assistant researching epigenetic clocks and relationships to hormones. She is in her fourth-year, studying evolutionary anthropology and biology at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on comparative biology and osteology of skeletal wrist adaptations between hominins, extant species and modern humans, and is currently learning how to do 3D geometric morphometrics.

Lina Qtaishat, External Lab Affiliate

Lina Qtaishat is a researcher and research manager at We Love Reading, a program of Taghyeer organization in Jordan. Her work focuses on implementation science and community interventions, evaluating their effectiveness on child development, literacy, life-long learning, wellbeing, and empowerment. Specializing in participatory methods like fuzzy cognitive mapping and mental modeling, Lina also manages research projects that integrate biological and physiological measures to advance understanding of human flourishing and development.

Signe Svallfors, External Lab Affiliate

Dr. Signe Svallfors (they/them) is a Wallenberg postdoctoral scholar at the Department of Sociology and an affiliate of the Center for Innovation in Global Health at Stanford University. Signe applies mixed methods to examine the impact of conflict and crises on sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice. Signe earned their PhD in Sociological Demography from the Department of Sociology, Stockholm University in 2021.

Risana Chowdhury, External Lab Affiliate

Risana Nizam Chowdhury is a biological anthropologist. She obtained her Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology, M.S. Biomedical Anthropology, and M.A. in Anthropology from Binghamton University (SUNY). Dr. Chowdhury recently concluded a fellowship in Behavioral Medicine at the University of South Florida-Tampa. Her research interests include social determinants of health, health disparities, social support, stress and resilience, the embodied effects of environmental influences, biomarkers, neuro-degenerative disease, bio-archives, evolution and human health.

Alumni Members And Affiliates

Hani Al-Samawi, External Affiliate

Aya Ahmad, External Affiliate

Alexa Fairclough-Dick, Former student member and ongoing affiliate