Professor Julia Lee Thorp

Research Activities

• A diet for all seasons: the role of intra-annual variability in the evolution hominin diets in East Africa
• The Wonderwerk Cave Project (CI with Chazan, Horwitz et al)
• Palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental context of the origins of modern humans in coastal South Africa (with Marean et al).
• The Late Glacial/Holocene transition in Lesotho (with Mitchell)
• The Palaeodeserts Project, Arabia (with Petraglia et al)
• Environments and isotopic ecology of the Upper Laetoli Beds: contributions to understanding the ecology of Australopithecus afarensis (with Musiba, Magori)
• Paleoecology of Central African hominins in Chad (with Brunet,  Likius, Mackaye, Vignaud)
• Reassessing the chronology, composition and climatic implications of three Neandertal and early modern human sites from France (with Morin)
• Dietary seasonality and life history strategies in primates (with Macho et al).
• The Agricultural Origins of Urban Civilization (AGRICURB)
• Building a better eggtimer
• Hunter-Gatherers of Late-Glacial Italy (Leverhulme Trust)
• Developing and Testing an Integrated Paleoscape Model for theearly Middle and Late Pleistocene of the South Coast of South Africa

Current Doctoral Students

• Eleanor C. E. Farber
• Quan Zhang
• Yingtung Fung
• Tansy Branscombe
• Peining Li

Service

• 2014-          NERC CORE panel member, Panel E
• 2012-          NERC Isotope Geosciences Facility Steering Committee 
• 2011-2013  NERC Peer Review College
• 2007-2009  Advisory Board, Historical East African Landscapes Project (PI Lane, York University).
• 2006-2010  Research Director, Archaeological, Geographical and Environmental Sciences, University of Bradford.
• 2006-2008  NERC Peer Review College
• 2007-2010  Review Panel, NRCF - ORADS.

Research grants

• 2015  National Radiocarbon Facility Archaeology Panel, Paired human-textile dating at Pica 8, northern Chile. (CI)
• 2015  National Radiocarbon Facility Archaeology Panel, The timing of archaeological and environmental shifts at Nelson Bay Cave and Byneskranskop 1, Southern Cape coast, South Africa.
• 2015  NERC Isotope Geosciences Facilities Steering Committee.  Sea surface temperatures from oxygen isotope ratios in marine molluscs from Late Pleistocene Middle Stone Age sites, South Africa.
• 2014-2015  National Radiocarbon Facility Archaeology Panel. Timing of environmental shifts at Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape, South Africa, and implications for extinction events. 
• 2013-2014   British Academy, Coming to Knowth. A strontium isotope approach to Neolithic mobility at a passage tomb cemetery. Schulting (PI), Lee-Thorp (CI).
• 2012-2013   John Fell OUP Research Fund, Postdoctoral fellowship for Dr Maura Pellegrini (PI).
• 2011-2012  Boise Research Fund, Dietary ecology of Australopithecus afarensis from stable light isotope analysis of fossils from the Upper Laetoli Beds (PI).
• 2011-2012  John Fell Research Fund, Exploring strontium isotope distributions in tooth crown sequences of migratory and non-migratory fauna from Laetoli, Tanzania, (PI).
• 2011-2012  Leakey Foundation, Dietary ecology of Cross River gorillas from stable isotopes (PI).
• 2011-2012  British Academy, Ranging behaviour of Equus and Cervus from the Late Glacial site of Settecanelle (PI).
• 2010-2012  Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovation, Spain, Life history strategies in sympatric primates – Co- Investigator.