Category Ancestry

The Ancestry Traveller: Genetics and Identity Drawing Group – The difficulty of building individual stories based on scientific data and other observations

The Ancestry Traveller project is my second meeting with high-tech sequencing and reading genetic information. In my synthetic motherhood project, I have been co-working with a forensic lab to predict the future look of my potential offspring. Ancestry testing allows us to do something opposite, to read the past (at least to a certain extent).

Human population genetics and the idea of ancestry: an anthropological perspective (part 2)

In the last decades, the idea of “ancestry” has become one of the most important and popular notions in human population genetics. On this notion stands genetics perspectives on the origins and history of contemporary living populations. However, ancestry has several meanings and outside of genetics, the idea commonly informs practices related to identity, kinship and family history.

Embracing Diversity: my multicultural roots

Growing up, I heard stories about my great-grandfathers on my father’s side who were convicts and political exiles from Macau and were exiled to Timor-Leste during the time of the Portuguese Colony. On the other hand, I discovered that my maternal grandfather’s ancestors were from Goa, India. Both sides of my family speak various languages, including Portuguese, Tetum, Indonesian, Hakka, and other Timorese dialects, which sparked my curiosity about my ancestral heritage.

Human population genetics and the idea of ancestry: an anthropological perspective (part 1)

Ancestry has become, in the last decades, a central concept in human population genetics. On this notion stands genetic perspectives about the origins and history of contemporary living populations. However, ancestry has several meanings and outside of genetics, the idea commonly informs practices related to identity, kinship, and family history.