معرفی
Professor Penny Spikins is a leading scholar in the Archaeology of Human Origins at the University of York. She holds the title of Professor and has held roles including Lecturer (since 2004), Senior Lecturer (2012–2020), and current Professor. Her research focuses on social emotions, cognitive evolution, and healthcare origins in prehistoric societies. She has directed major excavations in the Pennines and conducted underwater archaeology in the North-East.
Education: BA in Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Archaeology (University of Cambridge), MSc (Leeds University), PhD (Cambridge). Postdoctoral research included work in Patagonia and as a Sir James Knott Fellow at Newcastle University.
Research interests include the evolution of compassion, tolerance, and moral emotions; autism in prehistory; and the material correlates of social behavior. Notable works: Hidden Depths: The Origins of Human Connection (2022) and How Compassion Made Us Human (2015). She has pioneered GIS-based landscape modeling and interdisciplinary approaches to hunter-gatherer studies.
- Awards:
- YUSU Excellence Award: Contribution to Equality and Diversity (2016)
- Making the Difference Award (2015)
- YUSU Excellence Award: PhD supervisor of the year (2019)
Teaching includes modules on human evolution, hunter-gatherers, and cognitive archaeology. She coordinates the MSc in Early Prehistory and supervises PhD students exploring topics like prehistoric healthcare and neurodiversity.
Labs/Teams: Involved in the Hidden Depths Project and collaborative research on autism spectrum conditions and prehistoric healthcare. Current projects include studies on moral emotions and self-domestication.
