Marta Mirazon Lahr

Professor Marta Mirazon Lahr is a faculty member at the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge. She serves as Director of the Duckworth Collection, a Fellow of Clare College, and co-founder of the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies. Her research spans human evolutionary biology, biological anthropology, and Middle Stone Age archaeology with a focus on Africa.

• Key research areas: Evolutionary Anthropology, Human Evolutionary Genetics, Middle Stone Age Archaeology
• Major projects include the In-AFRICA program funded by an ERC Advanced Investigator Award, examining hominin fossils and environmental contexts in East Africa.
• Recent publications analyze:
• inter-group violence in prehistoric hunter-gatherers (Nataruk, Kenya)
• lithic landscapes as early human environmental impact
• genomic history of Aboriginal Australians
• virtual ancestor reconstruction for human-Neandertal divergence
• major transitions in hominin evolutionary patterns

Scientific awards include:

• ERC Advanced Investigator Award for In-AFRICA research
• Co-founding the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies

She advises PhD students through the Department of Archaeology and leads fieldwork in Turkana Basin and Central Rift Valley (Kenya). Her work integrates fossil evidence, genomic data, and environmental studies to trace human evolutionary processes across Africa and Eurasia.