Christina Warinner

Roles and Affiliations

Christina Warinner holds multiple academic roles: Group Leader in the Department of Archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University, Sally Starling Seaver Associate Professor at the Radcliffe Institute, and University Professor in the Faculty of Biological Sciences at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany. Her research focuses on biomolecular archaeology, particularly ancient DNA and proteins, to study human dietary history and microbiome evolution.

Educational Background

Warinner received her MA and PhD in Anthropology from Harvard University. She completed postdoctoral training at the University of Zurich and the University of Oklahoma, where she later became a Presidential Research Professor and Assistant Professor of Anthropology.

Research Interests

Her work integrates archaeology with molecular biology to explore prehistoric human diets, the evolution of the microbiome, and ancient population dynamics. Key areas include the origins of dairying, the ancestral human microbiome, and the genetic history of populations in Asia and Europe. She pioneered methods using dental calculus for ancient protein and DNA analysis.

Publications and Impact

Warinner has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in journals like Nature, Science, and Cell, and authored/co-authored books on paleoethnobotany and ancient Maya colorants. Her research emphasizes open access, with >75% of her articles freely available.

Awards and Outreach

Awarded the 2014 Kavli Fellowship and 2012 TED Fellowship, her TED Talks have garnered over 2 million views. She co-created the multilingual coloring book Adventures in Archaeological Science and actively engages in public outreach through lectures and documentaries like PBS NOVA's Secrets of the Sky Tombs.

Grants and Teams

She leads a multidisciplinary project in Mongolia investigating dairying origins and hosts international conferences like the Wenner-Gren Symposium on fermentation cultures. Collaborates globally with institutions such as Harvard, Oxford, and the Wellcome Trust.