She is also an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute for Human Evolution, University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa), and a research fellow at the Institut fur Naturwissenschaftliche Archaologiem, Universitat Tubingen (Germany). She received her BA in African and Middle Eastern History from Northwestern University (2002) and her MA (2004) and PhD (2009) in Anthropology (Archaeology) from the University of Michigan.