The Laura Bassi scholarship is awarded to PhD students and early career researchers by Editing Press, a company formed from academics from Oxford and Cambridge. The particular form of the scholarship Christopher Aris, PhD candidate in Biological Anthropology and member of the Skeletal Biology Research Centre (SBRC), was awarded will go towards professional editing services from Editing Press for research manuscripts he writes as part of his PhD thesis.
Three of Christopher’s thesis chapters will each constitute a unique research manuscript, all of which will then be submitted for publication. As a result, the form of this scholarship, to the value of £700, will be of great assistance towards both Christopher finishing his PhD and future career prospects. The particular manuscript the scholarship will assist him with publishing regards Christopher’s work on permanent human incisor and canine enamel, specifically their growth patterns and thickness.
Within his research manuscript, written alongside Dr Chris Deter and Dr Patrick Mahoney, Christopher analyses the daily growth rates of the dental enamel as well as average and lateral thickness. These features are studied to look for variations both between human populations and between male and female groups. Up until this paper, very few studies have analysed enamel growth for variation between males and females, and no studies have directly analysed canine and incisor daily enamel growth for variation within the human species.
Image: Cross-section of an upper molar