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
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departments involved from the beginning
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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
CHP Researchers
Axel Palmér
Associate Senior Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Comparative Indo-European Linguistics 2025-present;
Former Human Past SCAS Junior Fellow (2024-25)
Department of Linguistics and Philology, UU
Daniel Brown
Postdoctoral Researcher 2026-28
Department of Archaeology, Ancient History & Conservation, UU
Human Past SCAS Fellows
Associated Researchers
Hugo Reyes Centeno
Former Human Past SCAS Senior Fellow (2025-26)
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Kentucky
David Goldstein
Former 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
former Human Past SCAS Senior Fellow (2024-25)
Researcher, Department of Slavic and Baltic Studies, Finnish, Dutch and German, Stockholm University
Mehmet Somel
former Human Past SCAS Senior Fellow (2024-25)
Professor of Biology, Middle East Technical University, Ankara
Scientific Advisory Group (SAG)
Our funding organizations
Associated partners
