Lexi O’Donnell is a biological anthropologist who focuses on Southwest archaeology and dental anthropology. She currently holds a Visiting Assistant Professor position at the University of Mississippi, where she has worked since 2019. She grew up in Tucson, Arizona and became interested in archaeology at a young age. 

She received her B.A. in Anthropology with a focus on Archaeology from the University of Arizona in 2008. In 2016, she earned an M.S. in Evolutionary Anthropology from the University of New Mexico, and in 2019, she received her Ph.D. in Anthropology with a focus in Archaeology from the University of New Mexico.

She has worked on projects in the Southwest United States, Belize, Colombia, Mexico, and the American South. Her research focuses on how inequality and marginalization impact individual and group health. Much of her research has focused on migrations and population movements in pre-Spanish contact New Mexico. She also works to understand under what conditions porotic hyperostosis and cribra orbitalia—two porous cranial lesions, which indicate childhood stress experiences— form.