Laura Jordan is a third-year Ph.D. student in anthropology who holds a master’s degree in anthropology with a minor in forensics and emphases in biocultural anthropology and bioarchaeology. Before returning to academia, she worked with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (DHS-FEMA) as a Secretary of the Interior (SOI)–qualified Registered Professional Archaeologist (RPA), with federal experience in skeletal biology, historic preservation, and cultural collections, including work connected to the FEMA–Smithsonian Heritage Emergency National Task Force (HENTF).

Her earlier research examined forensic and biocultural anthropological approaches within BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) communities, particularly culturally specific mortuary practices, constrained burial landscapes, and the structural inequities that leave cemeteries and ancestral burial grounds vulnerable to neglect and erasure. Her current doctoral research takes an interdisciplinary approach at the intersection of biocultural anthropology and public health, with particular interests in social epidemiology, structural inequality, and embodied health. She examines how race, socioeconomic marginalization, kinship and caregiving systems, institutional structures, and access to resources shape health, vulnerability, and decision-making across the life course. Drawing from medical and biocultural anthropology and public health, she integrates qualitative and quantitative approaches to situate individual experiences within broader social, cultural, and institutional contexts, particularly among historically marginalized populations.

Jordan also serves as vice president of the Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (APIA), a UNLV Graduate Registered Student Organization (GRSO), and is the first Asian American Ph.D. student from anthropology to hold executive office within a UNLV GRSO. Outside of academia, she enjoys freelance modeling, volunteering with a local cottage bakery, designing apparel for her Etsy shop, and writing and performing poetry from her published collection, Love As Usual.