Kristine Joy Chua is assistant professor of anthropology and the director of the Reproductive Biology and Evolution Laboratory at Notre Dame. She has been a Kellogg faculty fellow since 2026.
Her research combines evolutionary and biocultural anthropology perspectives to understand how chronic stress affects pregnancy, utilizing methods from anthropology, biology, and public health to explore the social and biological factors that create and sustain peri- and postnatal inequities. Working closely with pregnant women in the Philippines and the US, she also studies the role that cultural practices play in shaping health norms.
Chua currently co-leads a project addressing how the maternal immune system responds to fetal cells circulating throughout pregnancy, part of a larger international, multidisciplinary project funded by the John Templeton Foundation.
Chua also leads the Pinoy-Pinay Health (PH) Project in collaboration with Mariano Marcos State University, Northwestern University, Laoag City, and the Governor Roque B. Ablan Sr. Memorial Hospital. This project examines how ecological stressors, including socio-political conditions, influence maternal-fetal dynamics and their biological systems among pregnant Filipina mothers. It explores the political landscape and the range of political beliefs, cultural norms, and stress responses, connecting them to pregnancy and birth outcomes.
Chua was recognized as a 2023 STAT Wunderkind for her contributions to health and medicine. Her work has been published in Scientific Reports, Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology, and other scholarly journals.
She holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles.