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
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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
CHP Office; Coordinator
Scientific Advisory Group (SAG)
Human Past SCAS Fellows
Hugo Reyes Centeno
Human Past SCAS Senior Fellow,
2025-26
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Kentucky
David Goldstein
Human Past SCAS Senior Fellow,
2025-26
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
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
Professor of Biology, Middle East Technical University, Ankara
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
Our funding organizations
Associated partners
