Postdoctoral research projects
Our postdoctoral researchers contribute to the Center’s overarching goal to illuminate and understand various aspects of human development over the past 10,000 years.
They work with computer-based analysis methods and large databases to develop theories and methods for analysing aggregated data from genetics, archaeology, and linguistics, thereby advancing innovative interdisciplinary research on human history.
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.