NG’IPALAJEM team
Marta Mirazon Lahr
Robert Foley
Aurelien Mounier
Lucia Nadal
Justus Edung
Edwin Murungi
Simon Eporon
Turkana Team
Joseph Ekeno, Joseph Erupe, Mokosa Eturi Eporon, Joseph Lomeru Lopua, Joseph Akota, David Lomuria, Robert N’girotin, Samuel Yerikol, Simon Nachako Eporon, Raymond (Peterson) Ekitui Eporon, Echulukum (Predo) Ebeya Eporon, Peter Amuk Eporon, Robert N’gichilia Nangorkit, Epeot Ekwanga Lokorio, Itoot Echulukum Lodip, Nakonyi (Atadeit) Evani Echwn, James Lokaadelio, Michael Emuzugut Eporon, Sermia (Maasai) Imoit Nakitang, Francis (Liwan) Lokamu Ekwar, Peter Akolonyo. Paulo Lowasa Ngatokatse, Simon Loris Akuron, Edukon Emekwei David, Simon Kakalel
Project collaborators
Edgard Camaros
Enrico Cappellini
James Clark
Matthew Collins
Mathieu Duval
Mikael Fortelius
Rainer Grun
Jason Head
Christine Lane
Louise Leakey
Meave Leakey
Bienvenido Martinez Navarro
Matthew van Schalkwyk
Celine Vidal
Frido Welker
Marta Mirazon Lahr is the PI of the project. She is a Fellow of Clare College and Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology & Prehistory at the University of Cambridge. She studied Biology at the Instituto de Biociencias of the University of Sao Paulo, Brasil, and did her Masters and PhD at Cambridge, where she later held a JRF at Clare College. At Cambridge, she was the Director of the Duckworth Collection for 21 years. The focus of her research is the evolution of our species, Homo sapiens, a process that current genomic evidence indicates spans most of the last million years and is the subject of NGIPALAJEM. Her work involves a range of disciplines – human palaeontology, evolutionary genetics, behavioural ecology, prehistoric archaeology and Quaternary African palaeontology. She has carried out fieldwork in the Amazon, the South Pacific, India, Oman, Libya and Kenya, where she directed surveys and excavations in Turkana and the Central Rift Valley. She was the PI of the IN-AFRICA Project and co-PI of the Trans-Sahara Project, both funded through ERC Advanced Grants.
Robert Foley is a Fellow of King’s College, a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Turing Institute, and the Leverhulme Professor of Human Evolution Emeritus at the University of Cambridge, where he co-founded the Leverhulme Centre of Human Evolutionary Studies with Marta Mirazon Lahr. Rob is an evolutionary anthropologists with broad research interests in all aspects of human evolution, in particular on understanding humans in terms of general Darwinian patterns and processes, and relating human evolution to more general models of evolution. His work has tackled questions on social evolution, speciation and extinction in hominins, hunter-gatherer ecology, the origins of modern humans, and the evolution of technology. He also has a longstanding interest in languages and linguistics, and was the Director of the Centre for Language Sciences at Cambridge. More recently, he has also developed pioneering methods for the use of phylogenetic methods in revealing the history of stars. He is currently the PI of the Palaeoanalytics Project with the Turing Institute, exploring AI and machine-learning techniques for the analysis of prehistoric lithic artefacts. He has worked in Kenya since 1973, and in Turkana since 2008, and also carried out fieldwork in Melanesia. His books include Another Unique Species: Patterns in Human Evolutionary Ecology, Humans before Humanity, and Principles of Human Evolution.