A combination of anthropology and French created the path for student Samantha Sharon Ashok at the University of Pennsylvania to discoveries detailed in her award-winning senior honors thesis.

Ashok researched the mid-1800s work of Paul Broca, a French physician and anthropologist, one of the most influential scientists of his time.

The thesis, written in both English and French, won Penn’s Rose Undergraduate Research Award and the Anthropology Prize for Best Senior Thesis as well as an honorable mention for the French & Francophone Studies Honors Thesis Award.

“I’ve always wanted to accomplish a big work of research. I’m really happy with how it turned out,” says Ashok, who graduated from Penn's College of Arts and Sciences in May. “The history of science and race really interested me.”

Ashok’s research on Broca, requiring translation of primary documents written by him in French, is important, says her Penn professor and mentor, Janet Monge, keeper of the Physical Anthropology Section in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

“One of the best edges we can give students here at Penn is to do primary research,” Monge says. The ability “to independently produce a body of work” is what distinguishes students, she says.

Monge is known for her work with the Museum’s famous Morton Collection of Human Skulls. Ashok has been Monge’s assistant, working directly with the collection, for the past two years through a work-study job.

“It was a piece of the puzzle always a bit missing,” Monge says about Ashok’s research, which was based in part on her knowledge of the Morton Collection.

Broca is best known for his research in neuroscience and his discovery of the part of the brain responsible for speech production, called Broca’s area.

Ashok, however, studied his work in anthropology, specifically his research and his development of standardized anthropometric measurements for the human body that are still in use today in many capacities, including for assessment of growth and development.

Ashok contends her research demonstrates that Broca was one of the purest scientists of the 19th century, focusing primarily on quantitative, numerical data rather than assumption.

Influenced by Samuel George Morton, who created the collection of nearly 1,000 skulls from around the world, Broca is one of the scientists associated with human racial classification.

Broca created the precise anatomical measurements for his studies to quantify human differences. The goal was to classify mixed-race people to prove his concept of human hybridity, based on his theory that each human race was a distinct species and that a combination created a hybrid human.

​​​​​​​Human hybridity, a term Broca coined and researched between the 1850s and 1870s, does not exist, as humans belong to one species, Homo sapiens. However, his research and his measurements were critical to the quantification of human physical differences that are still used today.

“She really contextualized Broca,” says Monge, who was one of two thesis advisors.​​​​​​​

Ashok’s research, Monge said, helps to “frame the field better,” and leads to clearer understanding of the mission and work of the era’s scientists.

​​​​​​​Paul Wolff Mitchell, a third-year graduate student in anthropology, was also her thesis advisor. Discussions with him about his research of 19th-century science led Ashok to Broca.

“It was a serendipitous match of interests,” says Mitchell, a 2013 Penn graduate.

He praised Ashok’s ability to synthesize and integrate her two majors, Biological Anthropology and French and Francophone Studies.

“She put together a really interesting and analytically intriguing project,” he says, adding that her effort “shows intellectual maturity and creativity.”

The experience of serving as a thesis advisor was rewarding, he says, and proved to him that graduate students are a valuable resource for undergraduates.

“We are accessible and there are a lot of us, and we know what it’s like to enter this big wide area of research with more questions than answers,” he says.

Mitchell says he is using some of Ashok’s findings, especially the translations of Broca’s work, in his research.

“The translations she produced of Broca are incredibly important,” he says, adding that she found “hidden gems” in her translations, not obvious in secondary literature.

“Broca hasn’t been translated much, and some existing translations were confusing, taken directly instead of worked out,” she says.

Ashok took a French translation course specifically to prepare for her thesis because she not only translated Broca’s work but also wrote her 14,000-word thesis in French and English.​​​​​​​

Ashok has always liked languages. Her parents, from India, speak Tamil.

“I wouldn’t have been able to do the thesis without French,” she said. She had a second work-study job in the Penn Language Center.

​​​​​​​Ashok grew up in Northeast Philadelphia and attended Masterman High School. Always interested in world history, her freshman year at Penn she took an archaeology course, which led her to Monge and physical anthropology.

Next year Ashok will continue her studies at Bryn Mawr College to prepare to apply to medical school. She says she is interested in orthopedic sports medicine. The experience at the Penn Museum with the Morton Collection prepared her well.

“She had to learn to recognize every part of the human anatomy, bits of bones in an archaeological context,” Monge says. “She became a premier osteologist.”

Monge said she is “very proud” of Ashok and Mitchell for their work together on the thesis.

“That says it all to me,” she said. “That students can have that kind of impact on the translation of a discipline.”