Profile

I’m living in London at the moment but I’m from Cornwall. I really miss the sea! (I went home at Christmas and went for a very quick swim!) I love any activities that get me in/on the water, but while I’m in London I’ve settled for running in the woods near where I live. My favourite time of the year is summer and I’m really looking forward to being able to go for long evening runs when the days get longer. I like to spend my free time learning languages (Cornish and Spanish at the moment), playing the piano, and reading (my favourite authors are Terry Pratchett and Phillip Pullman).

I’m an evolutionary biologist – so I’m interested in how species have changed over time, become extinct, and why living species look the way they do today. Humans (and our ancestors) are my favourite group to study, but I’m interested in almost any animal with a skeleton.

At the moment, I’m studying the shape of skulls in different species of modern apes (human, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons). I want to know if the skull shape varies (is different) the same amount in every species, and why their skulls might look different. To collect the information for my research, I had to travel to museums in lots of different places (Kent, New York, Berlin, Zurich, Brussels…). I spent a lot of time sitting in museum basements or windowless rooms measuring their ape skulls – but I also got to explore new cities when I wasn’t working.

Sometimes I also get to help out on archaeological digs. I’m really unlucky with finding things myself! The best things we’ve found on digs are some fossilised hyena poo (!) and what might be a tooth from a Neanderthal (one of our extinct relatives).

I love a lie in, so I usually start work at about 10am. I work in a shared office/lab at my university with other PhD students who study palaeoanthropology and primatology. We like having chats about the work we’re doing and human evolution in general – but most of the time we’re talking what TV shows we’re watching at the moment! Most of the time I’ll be sat at my laptop, analysing the data I’ve collected (this involves more statistics and computer programming that I’d like!) and writing up these results. Sometimes I’ll have a class of undergraduate students to teach about human evolution, maybe with some fossil casts (copies) to show them. I’ll work until 6 or 7pm –  sometimes a bit later if I’m enjoying my work and getting a lot done! In the evenings there might be an interesting talk to go to, or I might just go to the pub with my friends who work in other parts of the university.

When I need to collect data, my day is very different. I had to travel to lots of different museums (in the UK, USA, Europe) to study the ape skulls they have in their collections. I travelled with a suitcase full of equipment that I needed to use to measure the ape skulls (it’s quite heavy – it nearly fell on me on a night train from Zurich to Berlin!). I would arrive at the museum in the morning, with my suitcase, and be taken to the room where they kept the primate skeletons. These were in cupboards or drawers or cardboard boxes, grouped together by species. I’d choose the skulls that I wanted to study, and then I’d spend the day very carefully taking measurements of these. It’s quite repetitive work, so I usually listened to music or an audiobook so that I didn’t get bored. At the end of the day I’d check all the data I’d collected looked okay (if I made a mistake on a skull I had to start all over again!) and then I was free! Sometimes I’d wander around the exhibits in the museum I was working in, or I’d go out and explore whichever city I was staying in. Then back for more the next day!