Archaeologist. Scientist. Researcher.
Themes
These are some of the questions that shape my research:
How did humans come to be everywhere?
What cultural adaptations made us niche constructors?
How have humans shaped the biosphere?
How is the past relevant today?
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Rather than trying to return land to an unattainable pristine state, conservation efforts would achieve more by empowering traditional and Indigenous societies and supporting local, community-based sustainable ecosystem management.
My Story
I took the long route to becoming an archaeologist.
I began my academic career not in the humanities, studying ancient Egypt and the Incas, but in the sciences, exploring how cells replicate, how DNA translates into the building blocks of our bodies, and how enzymes catalyse the reactions of life. My undergraduate summer job involved growing little colonies of the bacteria Salmonella typhimurium on plates of agar, and separating fragments of their DNA using methods that, following decades of revolutionary developments in molecular genetics, seem exceedingly quaint.