Michela Leonardi
Visiting Postdoc - Ecological dynamics through space and time
I am a biodiversity modeller at the Natural History Museum, London. The aim of my project is to inform ecological restoration in Africa. At the same time, I am a visitor here in EEG where I am finalising the palaeoecological projects that I have carried when I was postdoc in the group.
In my career, I have been working on various research questions focussing on animals and humans. 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.