HABCOM Committee Members

A researcher in Palynology and Paleoecology at the French Institute of Pondicherry, India with more than 25 years of experience. Areas of expertise include Pollen and Phytolith studies, Quaternary Paleoecology, Archeopalynology, Melissopalynology, Aeropalynology and Tropical Forest Ecology. Understanding and quantifying the vegetation changes in the Indian subcontinent with reference to changes in climate (specifically the monsoon) and with reference to human impacts which go back several millennia in this part of the world forms the major thrust area of present research. Delineating methodological challenges in Tropical Palynology and Paleoecology using multiple proxies and a trans-disciplinary approach building collaborations with human sciences, particularly Archaeology, in the framework of Anthropocene are big constraints in the tropics, and these are precisely the areas of interest. Actively engaged with international networks such as PAGES since 2 decades; actively involved in the PAGES LandCover6K working group since 2015. Has organized several International training programmes and workshops in the framework of ongoing scientific projects of PAGES and INQUA and has also received training in India and and other countries to be updated with the state-of-the-art.

Dr. Kumar Akhilesh is the Director, Sharma Centre for Heritage Education (SCHE), India. He is jointly directing the research program including excavations and multidisciplinary studies at the Palaeolithic sites of Attirampakkam, and Sendrayanpalayam, and is joint director of the project “Prehistory and Palaeoenvironments in SE India”, that includes research into the microlithic sites of southern Tamil Nadu. His experience lies in both field archaeology as also lithic studies. He is an expert knapper, with experience in knapping quartzite and quartzitic sandstones in addition to chert and basalt. He is currently directing a program on experimental knapping to replicate technological reduction strategies documented at the site of Attirampakkam. He has extensive field experience in southern and eastern India and has published in Nature (2018), Science (2011) and other peer-reviewed journals. He was awarded the Homi Bhabha Fellowship (2014-2016) for a project entitled ‘Experimental Archaeology in investigating Prehistoric Behaviour: Case Studies from the Site of Attirampakkam, India’, and was also trained at CENIEH, Spain for microwear analysis and new technologies in lithic studies. In collaboration with the Regional Remote Sensing Centre-South, NRSA, he was involved in GIS and applications of satellite remote sensing for research and heritage management of prehistoric sites in Tamil Nadu. He is a member of several archaeological associations in India. He is directing the public archaeology initiatives of his Institute and has organized workshops and training programs on prehistory for children, ECRs, faculty, local stakeholders and other interested participants, that are both in-house and elsewhere in India, Sri Lanka and South Korea. He is also currently developing the in-house children’s museum at the SCHE. He completed his Ph.D. on the prehistory of parts of Jharkhand, North India, from the Deccan College Post-graduate and Research Institute, Pune and has experience working on prehistoric sites and ethnoarchaeology in this region.

Masami Izuho is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Tokyo Metropolitan University. In 2011, he received the Quaternary Research Award of the Japan Association for Quaternary Research. He specializes in the lithic technologies and geoarchaeology of the Upper Paleolithic in Northeast Asia. He has worked in Russia, Mongolia, and Japan and is currently conducting archaeological and geoarchaeological investigations at the Shimaki site in Hokkaido, which is yielding chipped stone technology dating to the Last Glacial Maximum. Masami has also worked on the problem of Quaternary megafaunal extinction in Japan, attempting to understanding human-environment interaction in insular northeast Asia.

Pete Langdon is a Professor of Quaternary Science within Geography & Environment at the University of Southampton, UK. He is primarily interested in palaeolimnology, specifically subfossil chironomids (non-biting midges). Beyond this specialism he has wide ranging interests, broadly focused around reconstructing climate change; geoarchaeology; lacustrine biogeochemical cycling; and biodiversity studies. He currently works on a range of research projects including: biogeochemical interactions in Arctic lakes, with foci on the role of methane derived carbon within food-webs, and the impact of landscape change drivers on lake carbon and nitrogen cycling; better understanding of regime shifts (tipping points) in lake ecosystems, and comparing empirical data with modelling theory; and using a range of palaeoenvironmental techniques (insects, biomarkers, aDNA) to understand why and how the building of lake settlement islands (crannogs) fit into Celtic landscapes over the last 3000 years. He is currently working on lake ecosystems in every continent bar Antarctica.

I am an archaeologist specializing in human-environment interaction and ethnoarchaeology. My PhD thesis looks at Pottery, Trade and Diet in the archaeology of Surame, Nigeria. I am a 2018 fellow of the Africa Humanities Program (AHP) and a member of the on-going multidisciplinary Nok Culture Research partnership with the Institute for Archaeological and Archaeobotanical Sciences, Goethe University, Frankfurt-Germany. I have co-directed the annual field school, Department of Archaeology, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria 2012-date.

Dr Kim Davies is a palaeoentomologist based at University College Cork, Ireland and is a Geographer and Quaternary scientist. Her research focuses understanding human-environment interactions through the Holocene across a range of geographical locations. She has a particular interest in understanding how lake ecosystems respond to localised human activity and rapid climatic changes and disentangling the mixed signals of often seen in ecological communities.

She is a palaeoecologist and environmental archaeologist with a broad interest in late Quaternary environmental change. Her specialist expertise lies in the analysis of sub-fossil beetles in a variety of palaeoenvironments. Much of her work has been concerned with human-environment interactions in the early–mid Holocene, and associated long term biodiversity change, late glacial climate change, early Holocene landscape structure in response to natural and human-induced change, and the transition to agriculture in the Neolithic.

My research interests are ecology and ecosystems in lakes. I am skilled in looking for tipping points in ecosystems, detecting early warning signals of critical transition, and indicators of ecosystem structure. I mainly forcus on diatoms but also interests on other phytoplankton and zooplankton.

Mohamed Sahnouni is currently Research Professor and Coordinator of the Archaeology Program at the National Center for Research on Human Evolution (CENIEH) (Spain). He received doctoral degrees in Quaternary Geology from the University Pierre & Marie Curie (France) and in Anthropology from Indiana University Bloomington (USA). His academic and research interests include Paleoanthropology (with focus on early hominin technological and subsistence behavior in relation to Paleoecology), Old World Paleolithic Archaeology, Prehistory of North Africa, Plio-Pleistocene Stratigraphy and Paleoecology, Geoarchaeology and Bone Taphonomy. Sahnouni is currently directing paleoanthropological research projects in Africa involving a multidisciplinary international team of scientists to investigate: 1) the timing and character of earliest human occupation in North Africa; and 2) Homo erectus behavior and adaptation in arid environment. He is also collaborating with Indian colleagues to investigate hominin dispersal in Asia. He extensively published his research in high impact journals including Science, Journal of Human Evolution, Journal of Archaeological Science, Quaternary Science Reviews, Quaternary International, Geobios, L’Anthropologie, Palevol, etc.

Rathnasiri Premathilake is currently working as a Senior Lecturer at the Postgraduate Institute of Archaeolog y, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, and his main work includes postgraduate level teaching, fieldwork, laboratory experiments, excavations and field-surveys. He completed PhD dissertations at the Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, School of Geoscience, Stockholm University, Sweden in 2003. After completing his PhD, Premathilake has gone on to hold postdoctoral positions and postdoctoral vising research fellow in the School of Palaeoecology, Archaeology and Geography, Queens University, Belfast, UK and, he continues to work in close collaboration as an Associate Researcher with the Department of Ecology and Palynology, French Institute of Pondicherry and the Sharma Centre for Heritage Education in India. Broadly, Premathilake is involved research and education in the lines of Quaternary environmental reconstructions (vegetation and climate) and understanding human activities by means of palynology, micro-charcoal, organic carbon, michoriza fungi spores, foraminifera, dinoflagellate, thermally mature analysis and phytolith, together with radiocarbon dating on archaeological and palaeoecological sites in south and southeast Asia.

Prof. Shanti Pappu, is the founder/secretary, Sharma Centre for Heritage Education (SCHE), India. She obtained her Ph.D. from the Deccan College, researching the prehistoric archaeology of northern Tamil Nadu, under the guidance of Prof.K.Paddayya. She has over 20 years of experience in prehistoric archeology, directing (along with Dr. Kumar Akhilesh) research projects at the Palaeolithic sites of Attirampakkam and Sendrayanpalayam and microlithic sites of southern Tamil Nadu. She is jointly directing (with Dr. K.Akhilesh) the project Prehistory and Palaeoenvironments in SE India including regional surveys, test-pits and excavations, with multidisciplinary research inputs from geomorphological, chronological and palaeoenvironmental studies. The use of satellite imagery and GIS with field surveys and laboratory studies was also conducted to investigate both research and heritage management issues in northern Tamil Nadu. She has recruited and coordinated international teams from Spain, France, the USA and Sri Lanka to work in India, and has established collaborations with key research institutions in India and abroad. She is researching the life and work of R.B.Foote and is interested in the issues related to the history of archaeology in India. She has published 2 books and over 30 research papers in peer-reviewed journals, including Nature (2018) and Science (2011). She is recently appointed Advisory board, INQUA-HaBCom and Executive Committee, IPPA, and is Joint-Secretary, ISPQS. She has participated in conferences/workshops in India and abroad; and along with K.Akhilesh has organized workshops on prehistory under the R.B.Foote Memorial series in India. She is responsible for developing the public archaeology and outreach programs at the SCHE and in developing the children’s museum. Her interests lie in prehistory and Quaternary studies, history of archaeology, ethno-and experimental archaeology. 

My research concerns Ecology, Biogeography and Evolutionary Biology. It mainly investigates the mechanisms underlying population and community dynamics at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Theoretical and methodological approaches are developped and applied to study tropical and temperate ecosystems (tropical forests in India and New Caledonia, grasslands and weed communities in Europe, high-elevation peatlands in Bolivia...).

Her research, focusing primarily on South Asia and, to a lesser extent, Southeast Asia, the Pacific and the Southwestern United States, addresses a number of related issues including: the formation and transformation of anthropogenic landscapes; the causes and consequences of agricultural change; colonialism and imperialism; and the interplay between political power, economic organization, and social strategies of production and exchange.More on this  http://web.sas.upenn.edu/pennpaleoecology/research/
She is the coordinator of the Landuse 6K part of PAGES LandCover6K Working Group since it began in 2015 and is now in its second phase. This is the Archeology based land use mapping of LC6K. She has been working closely with INQUA HABCOM through the IFG HoLA.

After graduating at the University of Milan (Italy) in Natural Sciences (Botany), I worked as a contract scientist at the Archaeological Museum of Como and left the team in 1993 to start a PhD at the University of Cambridge. After finishing my PhD I took up a position as research fellow at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, also teaching archaeology and human evolution at the Institute for Continuing Education (Madingly Hall) of the University of Cambridge. In 2004 I became affiliated lecturer in the Department of Archaeology and in 2005 director of studies in archaeology and anthropology at St. Edmund's College in the University of Cambridge. Since July 2005 I am ICREA research professor first at the IMF-CSIC and from 2014 at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. I currently coordinate the Complexity and Socio-Ecological Dynamics (CaSEs) research group and I teach in the UPF Master in Global History.  

My background is in archaeobotany and environmental archaeology, and I investigate the socio-ecological dynamics of past human populations from Mediterranean to tropical environments. My interests span from past vegetation histories, the modelling and simulation of processes in human behavioural change, people-plants co-evolutionary dynamics, long term trajectories of biodiversity and sustainability in prehistoric societies, and the origin and resilience of agriculture. Agriculture had an immense impact on humans and non-humans, and the future of our world is linked to making agriculture sustainable by maintaining biodiversity, revaluating traditional knowledge and mitigating environmental impact. Key areas for my work are South and West Asia, and South America.

She is a professor in botany-vegetation history/palaeoecology and work within/coordinate several projects on environmental-vegetation history over long time perspective. This research has applications within archeology and present environmental questions such as management of cultural landscapes, biodiversity, and climate development. She is also research coordinator for Environmental Science that includes seven research groups. These groups build up the Section of Environmental Science and Technology (EST).She is overall coordinator of the PAGES LandCover6K Working Group since it began in 2015 which is now in its second phase with two distinct components - pollen based Landcover reconstruction and Archeology based land use mapping. This working group continues to work closely with INQUA HABCOM through the IFG HoLA.

Yanni Gunnell is Professor of Physical Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Lyon, France. He studies the archives of environmental change and the timescales of continental denudation and material transfer across the landscape. His multidisciplinary focus on geochronology and landscape evolution scenarios adopts a comparative approach, which ranges from cratonic environments to mountain belts and covers different climatic settings. He has worked in parts of India, Africa, Brazil, Peru, North America, Madagascar and Europe, and has published widely in peer-reviewed journals that cover geomorphology, Quaternary geology, geodynamics, as well as geoarchaeology, environmental history, and the social sciences.

My research interests are in water and sediment. I am skilled in water quality, pollutants analyses, species identification of freshwater invertebrates (microscopy), ecosystem restoration, environmental services and monitoring programs.

My research interests are in water and sediment. I am skilled in water quality, pollutants analyses, species identification of freshwater invertebrates (microscopy), ecosystem restoration, environmental services and monitoring programs.