Postdoctoral research projects
2025-27
Francesco Giannelli

The expansion of Bantu-speaking populations in sub-Saharan Africa, integrating genomic, linguistic, and spatial data
Project summary
My research focuses on population genomics, with experience across multiple animal species and evolutionary contexts. During my PhD at the Polytechnic Marche University (Italy), I investigated how expansion dynamics affect neutral and deleterious genetic diversity. I am specialised in forward simulations with SLiM, particularly in continuous-space modelling.
2024-26
Mattias Sjölander

Tracing human and natural change in big interdisciplinary data
Project summary
My research interests includes interdisciplinary apporaches in the study of how human – environment relationships have developed over time. In my research I have studied the use of bifacial points, and its relation to the exploitation of quartzite, among hunter-gatherers in Västerbotten County during the Bronze Age period.
In my current project I am using exploratory techniques for interrogating large environmental datasets, including fossil insect and pollen data, from the European region. The aim is to integrate the information from the two proxies for environmental change in order to reconstruct the Holocene European landscape and study human mobility over time.