I am a Marie-Sklodowska Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in the University’s School of Archaeology. My MSCA research project investigates the ethnographic and archaeological evidence for diversity and unity across southern African hunter-gatherer societies over the last several millennia. The project creates and uses a new custom database of information from ethnohistorical sources and anthropological studies about socio-cultural diversity among historical and contemporary San (Bushmen) hunter-gatherers to assess arguments about the degree and kind of diversity among the region’s past hunter-gatherer populations. It investigates the degrees of diversity and unity within the historically and anthropologically observed sample, assesses the extent to which the themes of diversity and unity are evident in regional samples of South African rock art, and identifies what implications the ethnographic database and rock art study have for how the themes of diversity and unity are approached in other kinds of archaeological research into southern African hunter-gatherers.

More generally, I am a cognitive archaeologist with a specialist focus on the religious/spiritual rock art of southern African hunter-gatherers. Ideational Cognitive Archaeology is concerned with the ideational realm of people’s ways of thinking and acting, especially as evidenced in their ontologies/worldviews/cosmovisions, religious beliefs, ritual practices and imagery. In my research, I work closely with historical and ethnographic sources, anthropological literature, archaeological evidence (including excavated materials and rock art) and performance theory (also called performance studies). My published master’s and doctoral research, carried out at the University of the Witwatersrand’s Rock Art Research Institute, developed a performance-theory approach to rock art research. That approach combines the tenets and principles of performance theory (which define and elaborate the audience-performer interactions at the centre of a broad range of contingent scenarios involving particular human behaviours) with the richness and complexity of South African rock art — itself the residue of people’s past performances.

At Regent’s, my JRF role supports the College’s mission to create an exceptional community of learning and research, to which I contribute through my own research activities and publications, participation in the academic life of the College, and by serving as a College advisor to graduate student members.