I am an archaeological scientist interested in exploring the articulation between material culture, genetics and biogeography to further theoretical, methodological and scientific advances in the field of human evolution. I am a tenured Associate Professor (W2) and the 'Lise Meitner' Independent Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany where I head the Pan-African Evolution and ERC funded IslandLab research groups.
I am also an affiliated Associate Professor in the Department of Classics and Archaeology at the University of Malta, my alma mater, and Reader in the Department of Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Cologne. Prior to my current position, I held a number of independent postdoctoral fellowships, won by open competition, including a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, a British Academy Fellowship at the University of Oxford with a Junior Research Fellowship at Jesus College, and a Fyssen Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Bordeaux. I obtained my PhD at the University of Southampton in 2013.
My research groups combine primary fieldwork with a range of different modelling approaches using palaeoecological and genetic data, in order to test different hypotheses about human evolution and the deep human past.