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Husna Mashaka Katambo is a Tanzanian paleoecologist and archaeologist whose research focuses on reconstructing past environments and human-environment interactions in eastern Africa. Currently a PhD student at Arizona State University’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change and the Institute of Human Origins, she employs phytolith analysis—studying microscopic silica structures from ancient plants—to understand vegetation history and climate change over the Late Pleistocene and Holocene periods.  

Her fieldwork centers on the Kisese II rockshelter in central Tanzania, a site significant for its archaeological and paleoenvironmental records. Through her research, she aims to elucidate how ancient hunter-gatherer and herding communities influenced and adapted to environmental changes.

Mashaka’s academic background includes a BA in Heritage Management from the University of Dar es Salaam and a Master’s degree from the University of Nairobi. She has been recognized with fellowships such as the Leakey Foundation’s Baldwin Fellowship and the 2024 Francis H. Brown African Scholarship, supporting her contributions to paleoenvironmental research in Africa.

 is a PhD candidate in anthropology at Arizona State University’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change, affiliated with the Institute of Human Origins. Her research focuses on community-based participatory archaeology, landscape archaeology, and the social dimensions of archaeological practice. She has conducted fieldwork in regions including northern Kenya, central Tanzania, and the southeastern United States.

James’s academic background includes a B.A. in Anthropology and Geography from Coastal Carolina University and an M.A. in Anthropology from Arizona State University. Her master’s thesis involved geospatial analysis of obsidian movement in Late Pleistocene Kenya and Tanzania. She has been recognized with awards such as the Excellence in Graduate Achievement in Archaeology and has contributed to publications on collaborative archaeology and obsidian sourcing in eastern Africa. 

In addition to her research, James has served as a teaching associate at both Arizona State University and Coastal Carolina University, instructing courses like ASB 327: Disaster! and ANTH 101L: Primates, People, and Prehistory Laboratory. She is actively involved in academic service, including roles in the Association of All Graduate Students at ASU.

John is a PhD candidate in anthropology in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change and an affiliate of the Institute of Human Origins. Broadly, he is interested in the evolution of Homo sapiens in Africa and behavioral variation across late Pleistocene hominins. His dissertation research focuses on better understanding the emergence and context of the intentional heat treatment of lithic raw material to improve its quality for toolmaking during the Middle Stone Age of South Africa. John combines experimental archaeology, lithic analysis, and field research to address the question: how did Middle Stone Age humans heat-treat silcrete across ~125,000 years on the south coast of South Africa? John has conducted field work in Jordan, Kenya, and South Africa and is involved in the study of lithic material from Pinnacle Point, Knysna, and a large-scale landscape survey in eastern Senegal.

Links: Google Scholar | ResearchGate | Twitter (X)

[photo coming soon] Babalola "Jayjay" Jacobs is a PhD student at the Institute of Human Origins and School of Human Evolution and Social Change. He is interested in landscape geoarchaeology and the Middle and Later Stone Age of Western Africa, particularly Nigeria and Senegal. Jacobs was awarded the Leakey Foundation’s Baldwin Fellowship in 2024, which supports promising African scholars in the field of human origins research.