Alexia Smith, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Connecticut, specializes in archaeology, ancient plant use, and the ways in which people have adapted to climate change across the globe in antiquity. She has worked on multiple excavations in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Armenia and has conducted agricultural research in Malaysia and studied local landforms and cultural histories in Iceland. Her research focuses on early agriculture and how people adapted to climate change in the past, but more recently, she has become fascinated with the cultural history of food. She is now working on a book detailing the cultural rise of bread.

A former Fulbright scholar, Alexia has published numerous articles in prominent journals, received funding from the National Science Foundation to further her research and teaching, and received university awards for her advising. She has lived in Austria and in Spain, where she taught English. She earned her PhD in archaeology from Boston University and teaches courses on archaeological discoveries across the globe, ancient plant use in antiquity, ecological anthropology, and early civilizations.