Dr. James Blinkhorn
Main Focus
In my current role as Fieldwork Director of the aWARE Project, part of the Pan African Evolution Research Group, I am leading field-based research work spanning four West African countries, including Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, Nigeria and Senegal, focusing on examining Stone Age sites in diverse ecological settings.
The themes of human-environment engagement and landscape colonisation draws together my wider research interests. My expertise in stone tool analyses has enabled me to build an active research programme of research in the Thar Desert (Gateway to South Asia), and participate on projects across Asia and Africa, augmented by the use of spatial and computational methods to examine relationships between behavioural innovation, biological evolution and environmental change.
Curriculum Vitae
Academic Employment
2020-2023 Fieldwork Director, Pan African Evolution Research Group, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPISHH), Jena, Germany.
2018-2020 Leverhulme Post-Doctoral Research Associate (Early Modern Human African Dispersals), Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, U.K.
2017-2018 NERC Post-Doctoral Research Associate (Chew Bahir), Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool, U.K.
2016-2017 Post-Doctoral Researcher, Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPISHH), Jena, Germany.
2015-2016 Research Fellow, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, U.K.
2013-2014 Fondation Fyssen Post-Doctoral Fellow, UMR5199 (CNRS) PACEA, Université de Bordeaux, France.