Nicole Taylor is an anthropologist who explores contemporary social issues related to education and health through the analytic lens of language practices. Her research includes teasing and bullying in schools, childhood obesity, and body image concerns among youth. Dr. Taylor is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at her undergraduate alma mater, Texas State University. Prior to working at Texas State, she served as the director of Scholar Programs at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Dr. Taylor holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English and a doctorate in anthropology from the University of Arizona.
Following graduate school, Dr. Taylor worked in the nonprofit sector conducting research in the areas of substance abuse, education and poverty, childhood obesity, and school climate. She participated in all aspects of nonprofit work, including capacity building, community needs assessments, grant writing, program planning, and evaluation. This experience provided Nicole with insight into policy implications of school-based behavioral health research that informs her scholarly work on gender, body image, and obesity among youth. Prior to pursuing her doctorate, Nicole taught high school and college English.
Dr. Taylor’s book Schooled on Fat: What Teens Tell Us About Gender, Body Image, and Obesity takes the reader into the everyday lives of teens as they navigated fraught realities of body image during a time of heightened fat stigma within a school environment that set them up for failure.
Photo credit: Garret P. Vreeland