Katherine Eaton

PhD Candidate

McMaster Ancient DNA Centre

About

Katherine Eaton is a PhD candidate at McMaster University and she studies the infectious disease “The Plague”. Her dissertation focuses on reconstructing the spread of this disease across the globe, using clinical samples and ancient DNA recovered from archaeological victims of ancient outbreaks.

By investigating past and present incidents of the plague, her work contributes to a better understanding of which populations were affected, why it went extinct in certain geographic regions, and how it has managed to persist throughout human history.

Interests

Anthropology
Bioinformatics
Infectious Disease
Digital Humanities
Software Development

Education

PhD in Anthropology, Current

McMaster University
BA in Anthropology, 2009

University of Alberta

Projects

NCBImeta

Efficient and comprehensive metadata acquisition from the NCBI databases.

Plague Phylogeny

Phylogeography of Yersinia pestis.

Talks

Presenting “The Plague”: Digital Exhibits as Interdisciplinary Method

A digital exhibit of plague, combining networks of disease, maps, and narrative text.

Jun 5, 2020 9:00 PM University of Victoria

Katherine Eaton, Nukhet Varlik, Ann Carmichael, Brian Golding, Hendrik Poinar

Code Project Slides Video Follow

Presenting “The Plague”: Digital Exhibits as Interdisciplinary Method

Plagues, Pipes, and Genotypes

Template Attribution: Free Google Slides Template

Jan 30, 2020 McMaster University

Katherine Eaton

Project Slides

NCBImeta

Template Attribution: Free Google Slides Template

Sep 16, 2019 McMaster University

Katherine Eaton

Project Slides

Publications

Katherine Eaton

March 2020 JOSS

NCBImeta: efficient and comprehensive metadata retrieval from NCBI databases

NCBImeta is a command-line application that downloads and organizes biological metadata from the National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI).

PDF Code Dataset Slides DOI

Hugh Willmott, Peter Townend, Diana Mahoney Swales, Hendrik Poinar, Katherine Eaton, Jennifer Klunk

February 2020 Antiquity

A Black Death mass grave at Thornton Abbey: the discovery and examination of a fourteenth-century rural catastrophe

This site represents the first Black Death mass grave found in Britain in a non-urban context, and provides unique evidence for the devastating impact of this epidemic on a small rural community.

PDF DOI

Jennifer Klunk, Ana T. Duggan, Rebecca Redfern, Julia Gamble, Jesper L. Boldsen, G. Brian Golding, Brittany S. Walter, Katherine Eaton, Julianna Stangroom, Jean‐Marie Rouillard, Alison Devault, Sharon N. DeWitte, Hendrik N. Poinar

April 2019 AJPA

Genetic resiliency and the Black Death: No apparent loss of mitogenomic diversity due to the Black Death in medieval London and Denmark

This study uses ancient DNA (aDNA) isolated from skeletal remains to examine whether evidence for large‐scale population movement can be gleaned from the complete mitochondrial genomes of 264 medieval individuals from England (London) and Denmark.

DOI

See all publications