John studied medieval English literature at the University of Chicago and anthropology, European prehistory and human skeletal studies at the University of Michigan. He has taught at Cambridge since 2001, and has carried out major interdisciplinary projects on the history of the human body from the Palaeolithic through the present, on skeletal evidence of lifestyle and ritual, on Calabrian archaeology and on medieval England. He is also interested in theories of art and material culture. As this suggests, he specialises in being a generalist.

Jess is a bioarchaeologist with a background in the European Neolithic and a research focus on reconstructing interactions between the dead and the living through funerary taphonomy. Jess is interested in how funerary treatment relates to people’s lived experiences and identity, and how death and burial can be ritually and politically significant events for shaping communities. On the Ancestors Project, Jess is analysing human remains from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age in Italy, intertwining traces of everyday life preserved in bones (such as health, trauma, and physical activity), with evidence for treatment after death, to investigate social differentiation. Jess is also involved in research projects in Malta and Britain.

Susan is the Project Coordinator for the Ancestors project, based at the McDonald Institute at the University of Cambridge. She has many years' experience working on European Funded projects in the University of London colleges of King's, Queen Mary, University, City and Westminster. Sue helps ensure the smooth day-to-day running of the project and co-ordinates the Cambridge, Rome and Tartu teams.

Dr. Christiana L. Scheib is head of the Ancient DNA laboratory at the Institute of Genomics, University of Tartu (Estonia) and a Research Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge. Her PhD from the University of Cambridge optimised protocols and explored the complex genetic history of Native American populations. Following this, she shifted her focus to include pathogen aDNA and the role of disease in human evolution. Her current work integrates a multi-omic approach to gain a better understanding of host-pathogen dynamics and how they have affected our genomes today.

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Biancamaria is a PhD student at the Institute of Genomics, University of Tartu (Estonia). After graduating with a Master's in Genetics and Molecular Biology from Sapienza University of Rome, Biancamaria spent three months focusing on DNA extraction from Anglo-Saxon calculus samples and bioinformatic analyses. Her current role in the Ancestors project is investigating whether shifts in the oral microbiome correlate with shifts in ancestry, diet, pathology and culture between Neolithic and Bronze Age populations in Italy.

Toni is a post-Doctoral researcher at the Institute of Genomics at the University of Tartu (Estonia). During his PhD at the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona, he focused on the retrieval of ancient pathogens’ DNA data (mainly Salmonella enterica and Plasmodium parasites) from different sources, including medical collections and human remains. Those genomic sequences were used to establish phylogenetic relationships between extant and extinct strains of the pathogens, with the aim of having a better understanding of how infectious diseases spread and how they acquire advantageous traits. Toni’s role in the Ancestors project is to implement the bioinformatical pipelines necessary to process the metagenomic data and also to analyse the different metagenomic profiles obtained.

Mary Anne Tafuri is a professor at the Department of Environmental Biology at Sapienza University of Rome, where she is the Head of the Isotope Laboratory. Her research interests are in human osteology, bioarchaeology, and stable isotope investigations of human remains. She has worked for many years between Italy and the UK. She teaches human osteology and bioarchaeology for BA and MSc courses in Italy. She is a member of several archaeological missions in Italy, Africa and the Near East. Her research projects have received funding from the European Union and from various Italian Institutions. She has published numerous papers in international journals and curated or contributed to edited volumes and monographs.

https://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/staff/dr-mary-anne-tafuri

Silvia is a Postdoctoral researcher for the Ancestors project, based at the Department of Environmental Biology at Sapienza, University of Rome. For her MSc thesis, Silvia investigated the health and diet of two Middle Bronze Age Italian populations through metaproteomic analysis of human dental calculus. Subsequently stable isotope analysis of collagen amino acids became her main research focus during her PhD at the University of York, where she has applied this method to the human assemblage from AD 79 Herculaneum. In the Ancestors project, Silvia investigates dietary and mobility patterns of prehistoric Italian communities using stable isotope analysis.

Sofia is a research assistant at Sapienza University of Rome, Department of Environmental Biology. Within the Ancestors project, she deals with osteological and palaeopathological analysis and stable isotope analysis. 

Trained as a Conservation Scientist and specialised as a Bioarchaeologist, after graduating Sofia continued to pursue her studies on evidence of metabolic stress and other infectious diseases in early medieval Italian contexts, relating them to stable isotope analyses. Her research aims to reconstruct the health conditions and living habits of ancient populations using stable isotopes and palaeopathology in combination.

​Martina is a PhD student in the Laboratory of Paleoanthropology and Bioarchaeology at the Department of Environmental Biology, Sapienza University of Rome (Italy). During her MSc thesis, Martina investigated human mobility in an Italian population dating to the Roman Empire through the analysis of strontium isotopes. For her PhD thesis, she is focusing on prehistoric populations from the Mediterranean Basin to reconstruct their dietary habits and their relationship with the environment. To do so, she employs bulk stable isotopes as well as compound specific isotope analysis of amino acids from collagen, together with Bayesian models to analyse the contribution of different foods to the diet.

Tina is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Organismal Biology (Human Evolution)

at the Uppsala University (Sweden). During her doctoral studies conducted at the Institute of Genomics at the University of Tartu (Estonia), she focused on the investigation of ancient genomes from the Italian Peninsula before the common era. Tina was awarded with a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation to continue her research in Sweden. Her research focus is the correlation between shifts in ancestral genetic components and socio-cultural-related patterns. For the Ancestors project, Tina generates and analyses genome-wide data from the Italian Peninsula and the Balkan.