Genetics and Genealogy Family History Narratives

Welcome to the Genealogy Reports Page at NSUWorks. NSU Faculty members, Dr. James Doan, Professor, College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences and Dr. Emily F. Schmitt Lavin, Professor, Halmos College of Arts and Sciences created this site as a repository for research projects in the field of genetics and genealogy.

This site documents genetics and genealogy research primarily conducted by students enrolled in the course, HONR 1000N: Genetics and Genealogy. Schmitt and Doan were inspired by the work of Spencer Wells, particularly when he came to visit NSU as part of the Distinguished Speaker Series on October 26, 2006. They developed this interdisciplinary course and began teaching it for the first time in Fall 2007. They have continued to teach this course on a regular basis ever since. Students explore their own near ancestry, including recent migrations, and their deep ancestry, including the ancestry shared by all humans, set against the backdrop of human evolution.

Projects include the presentation of individual results from ancestral genetics testing, such as was available from the National Genographic Project (2005-2019) and more recently from 23andme.com and ancestry.com. Family history projects include presentation of human haplogroups and generalized migration patterns, as well as recent ancestry traced through genealogical records and family oral traditions. Additionally, there have been three Honors thesis projects that resulted from inspiration gained from this course:

2015, Investigating African Ancestry in Puerto Rican Individuals via Testing of Mitochondrial and Autosomal DNA to Generate a Personal Phylogenetic Family Tree, Natalie Negrón

2010, Using Genealogical Records and Genetic Markers of the Y-Chromosome, X-Chromosome, and Mitochondrial DNA to Create a Personal Family History Narrative, Lauren Douma

There is also a paper describing some of the findings from students in the Winter 2010 section of HONR 1000N: Genetics and Genealogy- located here:

Doan, James and Schmitt Lavin, Emily F. (2011) "Exploring Identity Through Genetic and Genealogical Research: Development of a Collaborative Course Between Humanities and Biology," Quadrivium: A Journal of Multidisciplinary Scholarship: Vol. 3, Iss. 1, Article 8. Available at: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/quadrivium/vol3/iss1/8

We invite you to enjoy reading the results of research into these family history narratives and genealogies. Perhaps you will be inspired to research your own! How many of your ancestors can you name right now? How many more do you think you might be able to find?