Haley Horbaly PhD

Dr. Haley Horbaly is an Assistant Professor at High Point University, holding dual appointments in the Departments of Health and Human Performance and Physician Assistant Studies within the Congdon School of Health Sciences. Dr. Horbaly earned her Ph.D. and M.A. in Anthropology (Biological) from the University of Tennessee, where she also received training in forensic anthropology and was a PI for the Forensic Anthropology Center. At HPU, she serves as the course director for anatomy for the BMS program, and teaches undergraduate courses in anatomy and forensic anthropology. Her research program is broadly unified by an interest in morphogenesis, approached using a three- tiered framework: investigating the developmental processes that generate skeletal form, analyzing the morphology itself using 3D geometric morphometrics, and interpreting how these forms are distributed and organized within the broader morphospace. Her work has primarily focused on the morphology of joint articular surfaces in the modern human limb, and she is currently testing the generalizability of observed patterns across non-human primates and other vertebrates. In parallel, Dr. Horbaly is also exploring variation in the repeated segmental structures of the axial skeleton as another vehicle for understanding morphogenesis and vertebrate body patterning.