Postdoctoral Researcher, PhD
I am a vertebrate paleontologist, who is interested in the interaction between terrestrial mammals, climate and vegetation over the past 23 million years. My current research centers around the interplay between early humans and their environment. In the ongoing project I’m studying the Pleistocene human environments and human resource use in the Nihewan basin in China, which was at the edge of the Early Pleistocene human range, with arid climate and harsh winters. Different from the traditional taxonomy-based methods, I study the mammal herbivore fossils by analyzing their dental traits. By categorizing and coding dental traits, species and faunal communities can be analyzed using modern statistical and machine data mining techniques. Through the analysis of fossil dental traits, I can gather important clues about diet and habitat of ancient mammals as well as past climate.
Postdoctoral Researcher, PhD
I am a climate scientist who uses Earth System models in order to understand large scale climate dynamics, primarily over the Quaternary period (the past 2.5 million years). This includes identifying major feedbacks in the climate system and determining how these might be influenced by different climate states. My interests are broad, covering the role of the terrestrial biosphere, atmospheric dynamics, and the impact of changing ocean circulation. Currently my research is focused on reconstructing and analysing Quaternary climate in Africa, with a specific focus on the regional hydroclimate and the role it played in the evolution and migration of hominins.
Doctoral Researcher, MSci
I am an anthropologist currently working on my thesis which is entitled 'Characterising Variability & Heterogeneity in Human Environments'. I am using interdisciplinary approaches to investigate the environment's hominins occupied during the first dispersal event out of Africa. In order to better understand how the human niche changed during this period and interpret a major change point in the relationship between humans and nature.
Room C115 (Physicum)
Doctoral Researcher, MA
I am a palaeontologist, with additional background in archaeology. My current research is entitled ‘Promised Land? – Understanding the ecological background of hominin presence in the Caucasus’, which investigates the climatic context of hominin occupation in the Caucasus through ecometric approaches. Applying the ecometric models to fossil data provides the means to reconstruct climatic conditions and habitats of the past at fine temporal and spatial scales, which allows the investigation of the ecological versatility required from early humans to migrate and subsist in the region. The results of my project are expected show concrete evidence on how climate change affected hominin migration, and how versatile early humans were with the conditions they inhabited.
Room C115 (Physicum)
Doctoral Researcher (at the University of Granada), MA
I am an archaeologist working on the Hominin Niche Change project funded by Kone Foundation. In this project, I’m creating niche models of the Early Pleistocene humans, using archaeological databases and data from climate model simulation. My research aims to understand how changes in the ecological niches of hominins affected the distribution of humans and different stone tool technologies in the Early Pleistocene.
Room C115 (Physicum)