About us
Key facts
Center for the Human Past is a Centre of Excellence funded by the Swedish Research Council (grant 2022-06620_VR).
2024
the Center for the Human Past is established
2
main participants: Uppsala & Stockholm universities
4
departments involved from the beginning
3
scientific disciplines linked
The organisation chart
The distributed structure requires effective communication, coordination and shared responsibility between its five departments from two universities: the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History (AAH-UU), the Human Evolution Program (HEP-UU), and the Linguistics Departments (LING-UU and LING-SU).
The Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS) is the collaboration partner and administrator of our joint Human Past Fellowship Program.
Our vision
Bridge the efforts of archaeology, genetics & linguistics towards unraveling the complexities of human population history, movement, mixing, culture and subsistence of the peoples of the world in the last 10,000 years.
Our goals
Educate a new generation of interdisciplinary scholars so they:
Understand the data, models and analytical techniques of the other disciplines;
Make use of large databases of all three disciplines;
Address novel research questions prompted by the immersion into the other disciplines;
Foster short- and long term collaborations
Scientific Steering Group (SSG) & CHP Office
Mattias Jakobsson
Principal Investigator
Human Evolution, Genetics, UU
Carina Schlebusch
Principal Investigator
Human Evolution, Genetics, UU
Karl-Johan Lindholm
Principal Investigator
Archaeology, Ancient History & Conservation, UU
Jenny Larsson
Principal Investigator
Linguistics, Baltic languages, SU
Harald Hammarström
Principal Investigator
Linguistics and Philology, UU
Marzena Norling
Coordinator
CHP Office, UU
Current CHP Researchers
Axel Palmér
Associate Senior Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Comparative Indo-European Linguistics 2025-present
Department of Linguistics and Philology, UU
Mattias Sjölander
Postdoctoral researcher 2024-26
Department of Archaeology, Ancient History & Conservation, UU
Francesco Giannelli
Postdoctoral researcher 2025-27
Human Evolution Program, Department of Organismal Biology, UU
Daniel Brown
Postdoctoral Researcher 2026-28
Department of Archaeology, Ancient History & Conservation, UU
Lydia Furness
Postdoctoral Researcher 2026-28
Human Evolution Program, Department of Organismal Biology, UU
Human Past SCAS Fellows
Jaison Jeevan Sequeira
Human Past SCAS Junior Fellow,
2026-27
PhD, Mangalore University, India
Sohini Ramachandran
Human Past SCAS Senior Fellow,
2026-27 (VT)
Hermon C. Bumpus Professor of Biology and Data Science, Professor of Computer Science, and the Deputy Director of the Data Science Institute, Brown University
Hugo Reyes Centeno
Human Past SCAS Senior Fellow,
2025-26 (HT)
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Kentucky
Anthony Jakob
Human Past SCAS Junior Fellow,
2025-26
David Goldstein
Human Past SCAS Senior Fellow,
2025-26 (VT)
A. Richard Diebold Jr. Professor of Indo-European Studies, Professor of Linguistics & Professor of Classics, University of California, Los Angeles
Yoko Yamazaki
Human Past SCAS Senior Fellow,
2024-25 (HT)
Researcher, Department of Slavic and Baltic Studies, Finnish, Dutch and German, Stockholm University
Axel Palmér
Human Past SCAS Junior Fellow,
2024-25
Guest Researcher, Leiden University, The Netherlands
Mehmet Somel
Human Past SCAS Senior Fellow,
2024-25 (VT)
Professor of Biology, Middle East Technical University, Ankara
Scientific Advisory Group (SAG)
Our funding organizations
Associated partners
