Human Palaeosystems Group

The Human Palaeosystems Group, led by Dr Eleanor Scerri, is exploring the African origins of our species, Homo sapiens, through a combination of fieldwork and modelling projects.

aWARE Project

We are currently running a major programme of fieldwork to generate multidisciplinary data from a transect across West Africa spanning the Middle Pleistocene to the Holocene. The aWARE project (West Africa's Role in Recent human Evolution) is conducting work in Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Benin and Nigeria to recover new palaeoenvironmental proxies, palaeoanthropogical data and ancient DNA. Pan-Ev member Dr. James Blinkhorn is the Director of Fieldwork for this programme. Dr. Eslem Ben Arous is conducting geochronological work. Dr. Khady Niang, who has recently joined the group on a Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions Fellowship, is conducting archaeological and modelling work on population movements and changes. Finally, Dr. Margherita Colucci is modelling environment and disease transmission.

Ecological Niche Modelling

Dr. Emily Hallett is modelling the ecological niches of selected African species over the last 800,000 years to better understand shifts in habitat and link these to the movements of our hominin ancestors.

Palaeodemographic Simulations

Adrian Timpson is our new postdoctoral research assistant in data science. Adrian is testing out hypotheses concerning hominin palaeodemography through simulation-based approaches.