Julia van Beesel

Julia van Beesel is a Postdoctoral Researcher at KU Leuven and a DFG Walter Benjamin Fellow. She is a guest researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology's Department of Human Origins in Leipzig. Her work focuses on the form-function relationship in evolution, particularly shoulder evolution in hominoids and hominins. She aims to develop tools for interpreting fossil remains through biomechanical analysis.

• B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Biology from Friedrich-Schiller University Jena (2013–2016)
• Ph.D. in 2022 from Universität Leipzig, supervised by MPI EVA
• Postdoctoral positions at TU Delft (2022–2023) and KU Leuven (2023–2025)

Her research integrates musculoskeletal modeling to study evolutionary adaptations, collaborating with TU Delft and MPI EVA to streamline specimen-specific model workflows. Key areas include hominin fossil analysis and comparative studies between Gorilla and Homo.

Publications emphasize biomechanics, functional morphology, and evolutionary biology, reflecting her interdisciplinary approach. Awards include the DFG Walter Benjamin Fellowship supporting her current research.

Her work bridges paleontology and biomechanics, contributing to understanding human origins through detailed anatomical and computational analyses.