Koobi Fora Faculty & Staff

Senior Research Scientist and Head of Archaeology, National Museums of Kenya

Emmanuel K Ndiema is an archaeologist who has worked in the Turkana Basin for more than 19 years. His fieldwork in East Turkana has been focused on investigating human cultural responses to climatic variability during the last 10,000 years. He is particularly interested in the subsistence and land use patterns among pastoralist communities

Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health and Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University

Asher Rosinger is a human biologist who has worked with the Daasanach pastoralist population in Northern Kenya since 2017. His field research is designed to understand how humans meet their water needs, how this relates to perception, environmental resources and water insecurity, and the resulting health, hydration and disease consequences. 

STEM Education Development Specialist for the Master of Applied Science Program, University of Nebraska

Matthew Douglass’s research expertise concerns the study of long-term human-environmental interaction. He characterizes human movement patterns and land-use within semi-arid landscapes. He has recently initiated a study of changing pastoralist land use in the East Turkana Basin. He coordinates the Research Experience for Teachers (RET) component of the REU program.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology, The George Washington University

Andrew Barr studies the paleoenvironmental context of human evolution. He has conducted paleoanthropological field research in the Turkana Basin and in the Afar Depression of Ethiopia since 2009.

Graduate Student, Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University

Amanda McGrosky is broadly interested in the influence of the environment on human and non-human primate evolution and life history. Prior to joining Koobi Fora in 2017, she worked at paleontological and bioarchaeological sites in Europe and South America.

Assistant Professor, Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University
Kathryn Ranhorn has conducted fieldwork in the Turkana Basin since 2013, leading efforts to find, date and excavate Late Pleistocene archaeological sites. Her research focuses on the technological and social behaviors of early Homo sapiens, as well as community archaeology.

Postdoctoral Researcher, GW CASHP.

Sarah Hlubik works on the origins of pyrotechnology.

Associate Professor, Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford; Associate Director for Palaeoanthropology and Primatology at Gorongosa National Park

Susana Carvalho is a primatologist and palaeoanthropologist who is passionate about discovering more about our own behavioral evolution. She has spent the last decade chasing chimpanzees and baboons in Africa, while also digging some of the oldest technological sites in the cradles of humankind. Carvalho's work is at the foundation of a new academic sub-discipline: non-human primate archaeology. In 2016 Carvalho was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize.