Chelsea Shields height - How tall is Chelsea Shields?

Much of Shields’ academic work focuses on the concept of social susceptibility or why human bodies have evolved to be susceptible to social manipulation. Shields argued that grounding human behavior in social adaptations and viewing biocultural interactions in sickness and healing from an evolutionary perspective reveals important discoveries in placebo and ritual studies, religion, pain, stress, emotions, empathy, and social inequality. Shields spoke about how these sociocultural, biological and evolutionary concepts clash at the 2013 TED Fellows Retreat in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, where she used an Asante ethnographic case study of bonesetting to elucidate socially mediating pain mechanisms.

Shields is also known for her activism to combat religious gender inequality. Shields gave a TED Talk on the topic of Religious Gender Inequality at the TED Fellows Retreat in September 2015 eventually entitled, "How I'm Working for Change Inside My Church." She is also a contributor featured in Mormon Feminism: Essential Writings.

Shields' doctoral dissertation, "The Social Life of Placebos: Proximate and Evolutionary Mechanisms of Biocultural Interactions in Asante Medical Encounters" is an interdisciplinary study of the evolution of placebogenic responses–beneficial ones activated by psychosocial triggers–and their elicitation in Asante medical contexts. Based on extensive literature review in social, cultural, and medical studies over 26 months of intensive research in rural Ghana, West Africa, it examines the therapeutic efficacy of Asante medical encounters by analyzing rites of caregiving within an evolutionary framework.

Shields was born in Provo, Utah to Heidi and Eric Shields and raised in a conservative Mormon family in Tooele, Utah and Gresham, Oregon. She graduated from Orem High School (Orem, Utah) in 2000, Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah) in 2004 with a degree in Anthropology and African Studies, and Boston University in 2017 with dual PhDs in Biological Anthropology and Cultural Anthropology. Shields lives in Salt Lake City with her husband, Brent Stewart, and three children.

Chelsea Shields (born November 1981) is a Bio-social Anthropologist, Placebo Studies expert, Human Evolution Expert, Strategic Consultant, Women’s Rights Activist, and TED Fellow Shields and her work have appeared on broadcasts and publications including TED, Infants on Thrones, and TechInsider.