Abigail Nishimura

Abigail Nishimura joined Boston University in December 2025 as the Director of PhD Student Resources. In this role, Abigail directs professional and career development activities for the nearly 2,700 PhD and doctoral students across campus. Using a data-driven and operations-minded approach, Abigail builds supportive scholar communities that promote academic excellence, professional development, and personal success. Her portfolio includes PhD Progression (an asynchronous micro-credential professional development program), Vitamin PhD (a podcast featuring different PhD journeys), and other mentoring programs.

Prior to joining Boston University, Abigail worked at Stony Brook University’s Center for Inclusive Education. She received her PhD in biological anthropology from Stony Brook University, where she researched human evolution using macroevolutionary models and comparative functional morphological methods.  She received her BA in anthropology from Yale University.