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Introducing the Fall 2024 Leakey Foundation Research Grant Recipients

Grants

We are thrilled to announce the fall 2024 Leakey Foundation Research Grant recipients. Twenty-six scholars will receive funding to advance knowledge of human origins, evolution, behavior, and survival. Their innovative research explores fascinating topics such as how environmental variation shapes human adaptation, what viruses infected the gut flora of Neanderthals, how mothers form support networks, and what death can tell us about great ape friendship.

We look forward to sharing more about our grantees and their work as their projects progress.

Fall 2024 Research Grant recipients


Audrey Arner, Vanderbilt University: Understanding how rapid environmental change impacts human evolution and adaptation

Silvia Carboni, University of Calgary: Host-microbe ecosystems in the context of reproduction in wild tamarin monkeys

Tobias Deschner, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology: Field experiment on innovation of nut cracking in wild chimpanzees

Raquel Hernando, Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana: Investigating the later Pleistocene dietary behavior of colobus, baboon, and vervet monkeys in the Afar Region of Ethiopia

Haneul Jang, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, Toulouse School of Economics: Mapping social support networks of mothers in two small-scale societies in the Congo Basin

Mihailo Jovanovic, Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social: Reconstructing paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental conditions of the Mala Balanica (Serbia, East Europe) hominin

Myra Laird, University of Pennsylvania: Interactions between dental microwear formation and dental morphology in primates

Ruth Linsky, Simon Fraser University: Improving orangutan census techniques with thermal drones

Fredrick Manthi, National Museums of Kenya: Excavating a Middle Pleistocene hominin site in Natodomeri, northwestern Kenya

Guilhem Mauran, Université Toulouse Jean-Jaurès: The social contexts of glacial-interglacial ochre exploitation at Boomplaas Cave

Abigail McClain, George Washington University: Social loss and the behavior and physiology of wild chimpanzees

Laure Metz, Aix-Marseille Université: The sapiens colonization of Europe: The Levantine Early Upper Paleolithic and the question of the Chatelperronian

Décio José Dias Muianga, Uppsala University: Technological and human transformation in the biocultural heritage of southern Mozambique

Agazi Negash, Addis Ababa University: Obsidian and the archeology of the Middle Stone Age in Ethiopia

Nelson Novo, IPGP-CENPAT-CONICET: The youngest and possibly the last non-human primates inhabiting Patagonia, and their associated fauna

Piotr Rozwalak, Friedrich Schiller University: Uncovering the Neandertal gut virome

Baptiste Sadoughi, Arizona State University, Center for Evolution and Medicine: Social determinants of aging at the physiological and molecular levels in rhesus macaques

Emily Sanford, University of California, Berkeley: The evolutionary origins of rational reasoning in response to evidence

Bacara Spruit, University of the Witwatersrand: Unravelling human subsistence strategies at Boomplaas Cave during the LGM to LGIT

Dietrich Stout, Emory University: Foundations of percussive technologies

Flavia Strani, University of Zaragoza: Role of climatic shifts in the extinction of Neanderthals from the highest glacial refugium

Noora Taipale, University of Liège: Experiment-based approach to Middle Stone Age artisanship at Rose Cottage Cave

Savannah Troha, Arizona State University; Institute of Human Origins: Individual variation in male chimpanzee social phenotype

Shevan Wilkin, University of Basel: Residues of daily life: A palaeoproteomic investigation of archaeological beads

Jordan Wostbrock and Alex Bertacchi, Yale University: Development of a triple oxygen framework to investigate seasonal hydroclimate at early hominin sites

Deming Yang, American Museum of Natural History: Multi-proxy environmental reconstruction of Lemudong’o (late Miocene), Southern Kenya

Science around the world


Explore the maps below to see where our grant recipients do their research. The first map shows where all of the paleoanthropology and archaeology projects are located. The second map shows where Leakey-funded primatology and behavioral research is happening.

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I [name], of [city, state ZIP], bequeath the sum of $[ ] or [ ] percent of my estate to L.S.B. Leakey Foundation for Research Related to Man’s Origins, Behavior & Survival, (dba The Leakey Foundation), a nonprofit organization with a business address of 1003B O’Reilly Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94129 and a tax identification number 95-2536475 for its unrestricted use and purpose.

If you have questions, please contact Sharal Camisa Smith sharal at leakeyfoundation.org. 

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