Michela Leonardi
Postdoc - Ecological dynamics through space and time
I am a postdoc funded under the FORAGER ERC Synergy project. Its aim is to investigate alternative trajectories for human demographic growth in pre-agricultural societies. My role within it will be to model the ecological niches of key food resources (i.e. prey animal and plant species of interest) in the different study areas. At the same time, I am also a part-time biodiversity modeller at the Natural History Museum, London, focussing on reforestation projects.
In my career, I have been working on various research questions focussing on different species. Here are a few projects I have carried out in recent years:
- Reconstruct ecological niche dynamics through time using archaeological occurrences (e.g. European ungulates, Acheulean)
- Development of software to perform large-scale palaeoecological analyses from archaeological data (pastclim, tidysdm)
- Species distribution modelling through time using modern occurrences
- How climate and migrations impacted human genetic diversity through time
- Ancient DNA analyses
I always tried to keep the contact with the public, for example giving talks at science festivals (mostly in Italy), and doing outreach with school children. Among other activities, I have published Climate change – the board game: an educational board game about climate change and evolution, that can be freely downloaded or played online.