The Culmination of a Love Story
A fellowship may be the beginning of a research career, a funding opportunity for scientific research and professional development in all disciplines and at all career levels. For Luseadra McKerracher, who received an AIAS fellowship in 2021, it was much more than that. For her, it was the culmination of a 10-year love affair that finally found a base in Aarhus.
Luseadra McKerracher researches biological anthropology at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies and lives in Gellerup with her two children and husband. Had it not been for a fateful meeting in Paris 10 years ago, she would probably never have come to Denmark. Photo: Ole Toldbod.
Carsac-Aillac, France, summer 2011
In a small ramshackle house with crackled and lacklustre yellow stone walls and a red tile roof and surrounded by ivy and vines, Luseadra sat with her laptop in front of her, cursing the place's miserable Wi-Fi connection, trying in vain to dig out an email from a remote corner of the internet.
All around her, the lush landscape of southwestern France was fluttering, and you could get a glimpse of dusty rooftops between green treetops and flowering bushes.
She smiled.
A few hours earlier, she had been sitting surrounded by stones and dust, buried in the archaeological site of La Farrassie with a small brush in her hand, painstakingly – and perhaps first and foremost slowly – trying to dig out seventy-thousand-year-old teeth and stone objects. Now she was sitting – exhausted after spending the entire day in a hole – on a wooden chair that seemed almost as old, surrounded by a dozen young colleagues who were preparing dinner, with a glass of very young, mixed red wine in front of her, which she had just tapped from a 40-litre canister.
It was not the thought of La Ferrassie waiting for her again the next day that made her smile, nor the fleeting hope of finding ancient artifacts from the ghosts of a long-extinct human race. Not even the wine, which – despite abundant quantities – could probably at most be qualified as drinkable.
She was thinking of Bjarke.
Aarhus, 2022
Luseadra McKerracher is 39 years old and lives on the outskirts of Gellerup in Brabrand with her two children and her husband. Together with her family, she moved to Denmark in February 2021 to start the three-year fellowship she had been awarded at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, AIAS.
Luseadra researches biological anthropology, and at AIAS she heads the social science research project Supporting Pregnancy fOOd and Nutrition Security (SPOONS), which aims to measure food insecurity in Denmark with special focus on the most vulnerable and marginalised neighbourhoods – those on the ghetto list – right now mainly in Gellerup and Bispehaven.
Within the topic of food insecurity, the core question is whether people, due to, e.g., financial constraints can afford to feed their family the right, nutritious foods that ensure a healthy future for the entire family, at the same time meeting any cultural and social needs which might exist. It may be both the actual experience of running out of money or the persistent worry of not having enough money for the right food for the family.
‘I was very interested in finding out if people experience this kind of food insecurity in an otherwise very prosperous and well-functioning society like the Danish one. And they do. In the project, I have found evidence that people are food insecure in Gellerup, and then the next step is to support these people through knowledge tools, because it can be very problematic with food insecurity during pregnancies’, she says.
McKerracher was born and raised in the city of Victoria on the west coast of Canada. She earned her bachelor's degree at the University of Victoria and continued at the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, where she got her master’s degree in biological anthropology as well as a PhD within the same field.
Biological anthropology is the study of human evolution and adaptation in a comparative, biological perspective and among different human and primate races to understand the evolutionary history of the hominins, to study variations in human development and health as well as the mechanisms that influence population differences in the modern world.
The subject has taken her to many different locations around the world, from Canada to the United States, to Europe and to Guatemala.
But, initially, it took her to Paris. That was at the beginning of her PhD. Back then, she was primarily interested in our fossil relatives. The Neanderthals.
Paris, summer 2011. Five days before Carsac-Aillac
At least seven Neanderthals have been found at the archaeological site of La Farrassie, near the town of Savignac-de-Miremont in the province of Dordogne. The site, which consists of a large, deep cave in a limestone cliff carved out by a talus slope, was discovered as early as 1896 and has been excavated by several well-known French archaeologists throughout the 20th century.
In her quest to learn more about man's historical ancestors, Luseadra flew from Vancouver to France. The goal was to spend two months at the excavation site as part of her PhD and, hopefully, contribute to the new scrutiny of the place that had just begun.
On her way to the historic excavation site, Luseadra had ended up in a small, humble hostel in the heart of Paris. She had booked the cheapest flight, and therefore she had almost one week in the City of Love before the trip continued further southwest towards Savignac-de-Miremont.
She was one of the oldest in the hostel, where people slept together in large dormitories and shared bathrooms. Maybe she was a little too old for that kind of thing really, she had thought, but luckily, she got into conversation with a couple of Danish guys who, like her, were in their late 20s.
One of them, Bjarke, had just completed his master's degree in London and had taken a trip to Paris to celebrate the milestone with his friend Jakob. After a few days, Jakob went back to Denmark, and Bjarke and Luseadra were left behind – alone together in the City of Love, with only a few days to explore it.
‘Just try’, he said
In January 2020, Luseadra McKerracher lived in Canada, the Corona pandemic was brewing, and she was working in a temporary research position on an – in-her-own-words – dream project at the McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, which went by the name Mothers to Babies.
‘It was a wonderful community-based research project, and I spent a lot of time researching and interviewing pregnant women and the people who support them, synthesising all that information. It was the plan that based on my insight into evolutionary biology and anthropology, I could help with a deeper understanding of some of the environmental and evolutionary factors that affect what people eat when they are pregnant and how this may be used to support a healthy next generation’, she says.
But the research project was coming to an end. It would be completed at the end of the year, and she would like to go to a place where she could gather the family. Therefore, she applied for a three-year fellowship at AIAS.
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The scholarship for AIAS has had great professional significance for Luseadra. And, personally, the scholarship has meant the world. Finally, she has a base for her family, she says. Photo: Ole Toldbod.
‘In June 2020, very unexpectedly, I received positive feedback. I knew that the likelihood of getting such a scholarship was against all odds. It was mostly my husband who encouraged me to apply for it. “Just try”, he said. It has been of great professional significance to me that I received the scholarship’, she says, continuing:
‘It's very prestigious, and it really bolsters my CV, and then it is fantastic to be part of a truly interdisciplinary research lighthouse, to have space and freedom to run a research project without a lot of distractions and other demands while you are surrounded by people with completely different perspectives on the world than your own, people who are willing to help, develop ideas and ask really challenging questions regarding your research. I'm working on articles and grant applications now that I would never have thought of developing if it had not been for my course at AIAS. Academically, it just means the world to me’, she says.
Paris, summer 2011. The day before Carsac-Aillac
At a small café near the Parc Montsouris in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, Luseadra sat with Bjarke, drawing maps of their home countries on napkins and drinking caffe latte.
It was their last day together. The last four days had been wonderful, and what she had first assumed was a fleeting summer infatuation – a brief, happy moment in summer-beautiful Paris – had left a big mark on her heart.
‘But how would it ever be possible?’ she thought to herself. Bjarke lived in Denmark and she in Canada. And the next two months she would spend at an excavation site in southwestern France. It was an impossible long-distance relationship, but she really did not want to say goodbye.
Fortunately, they both felt the same way, and the short time which the two of them had together in Paris would result in a lifelong love affair. Thanks to Skype, they were able to stay connected and, in June 2015, they had their first child.
And finally, in 2021, after 10 years together and after moving their addresses all around the globe, the little family could settle in a place where they were close to (at least one side of) the family, and where they can both envision themselves pursuing their careers.
‘Had it not been for the five days in Paris at that time, I would never have been here. The AIAS scholarship has been extremely important to me personally. It means I have a base for my family in a place where there are long-term future prospects for all of us. This means that here, we can be happy together, and for that I am extremely grateful’, says Luseadra.