It’s time to change human evolution research

Dr. Robyn Pickering

Robyn uses uranium-lead dating to determine the age of rocks found in caves and discern how old the fossils they hold are. Having grown up in South Africa, she left to study abroad and returned after a decade to find that, despite the end of Apartheid in 1994, the university classrooms were diverse, but the faculty was still predominantly white. Determined to change this, she co-leads a research institute at the University of Cape Town to promote diversity and inclusion in academia, focusing on human evolution.

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Robyn Pickering is a geologist who specialises in determining the age of carbonate rocks and the environment they were in when they formed. Most of the carbonates she works on are associated with important sites of human evolution. She uses the uranium-series dating method to provide ages for these rocks and has been developing this technique for the last fifteen years. Robyn is currently the co-director of the Human Evolution Research Institute (HERI) at UCT and is proud to be involved in this work of transforming palaeoanthropology in South Africa.

Web: heriuct.co.za

Twitter: @PickeringRobyn