Training the next generation of archaeogeneticists

A new research centre will be used to train the next generation of specialists in the field of archaeogenetics.

The Centre for Evolutionary Genomics at the University of Huddersfield will be used as a training base for PhD students – over five years – aiming to deliver new specialists in archaeogenetics. The field involves studies of past and present geographic distribution of human genetic variation.

The University has been awarded £1 million by the Leverhulme Trust under Doctoral Scholarships – a major initiative – designed to foster new generations of PhD researchers at UK universities. The scheme involves 15 PhD candidates that will cover a variety of research topics under the supervision of Professor Martin Richards, a leading archaeogeneticist at the University of Huddersfield.

Research topics will include topics as diverse as the origins of multicellular organisms to prehistoric people of Atlantic Europe. The students will concentrate on both contemporary genetic variation and DNA from human and animal remains. The first group of five PhD students will begin their fully-funded doctoral research in October 2015. Over the following years these students will be joined by two more groups of five.

The Doctoral Scholarship Scheme was inspired by the concern that increasing debt might discourage graduates from undertaking doctorates.

Professor Gordon Marshall, Director of the Leverhulme Trust, said: “It is to be hoped that this first round of awards, modest though it is in terms of overall graduate student numbers, will kick-start a solution to the still unresolved problem of how adequately to fund graduate studies in the United Kingdom.”