Team Members
Tom Higham
Professor and Principal Investigator
Tom Higham is Professor of Scientific Archaeology at the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna. He was, until August 2021, the Director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at the University of Oxford, where he was based for 20 years. Prior to this he was Deputy Director of the Waikato Radiocarbon Laboratory at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. He held an ERC Advanced grant (‘PalaeoChron’) from 2013-2019 which focused on the age of Neanderthal disappearance and the onset of the Early Upper Palaeolithic. He obtained a second ERC Advanced grant called ‘Disperse’ in 2024 to work on the site of Ksar’ Akil, Lebanon and the Initial Upper Palaeolithic. His interests are in radiocarbon pretreatment chemistry, archaeological chronology building, the Palaeolithic and Bayesian chronometric modelling. He is the author of the book “The World Before Us: How Science is Revealing a New Story of our Human Origins” (Penguin). Tom is the Director of HEAS.
Photo: © University of Vienna / Der Knopfdrücker
Katerina Douka
Associate Professor
Katerina was a doctoral student of Robert Hedges in Oxford. She specialises in radiocarbon dating, in particular the development of new protocols for decontaminating archaeological material, as well as the statistical interpretation of AMS results using Bayesian modelling.
She is also interested in the application of biomolecular tools, such as collagen peptide fingerprinting (also known as ZooMS), to better understand the archaeological record. She heads the Douka Lab at the UNIVIE, the first palaeoproteomics lab in Austria. She was the Principal Investigator of the FINDER project, an ERC starter grant project that is using ZooMS to identify new hominin remains in prehistoric sites. In December 2024 she obtained an ERC Consolidator grant called RIFT-TO-RIM to explore the DNA and proteins of early human dispersals from Africa to the Pacific Rim.
Photo: © University of Vienna / Der Knopfdrücker
Dr Laura van der Sluis
Senior Scientist
Laura is a graduate of Queen’s University of Belfast (PhD) and the University of Amsterdam (BA in Arch. and Anth.). She was a post-doctoral scientist on the PalaeoCet project at the Musée d’Naturélle Histoire in Paris prior to coming to the University of Vienna in 2022. She is an expert in the application of XAD resin methods to purification of amino acids for AMS dating of bone and the stable isotope analysis of bone collagen. She manages the Higham Lab and teaches students and visitors. She has several HEAS Seed grants to pursue her research in chronometric and conservation science.
Photo: © University of Vienna / Der Knopfdrücker
Maddalena Giannì
Lab Technician
Maddalena joined the Higham lab in November 2022, taking care of pretreatment chemistry of samples for radiocarbon dating. Prior to coming to Vienna she was a Research Technician at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at the University of Oxford. Her undergraduate and Masters degrees were obtained from the University of Pisa in Italy. As well as lab-based work Maddalena is also an experienced and accomplished archaeological fieldworker, with experience working at sites sites in Europe and Africa.
Photo: © University of Vienna / Der Knopfdrücker
Dr Emese Végh
ESPRIT Post-Doctoral Scientist
Emese finished her DPhil in Archeological Science at the University of Oxford in 2022 before she joined us in Vienna. She was a post-doctoral scientist in the Douka Lab and from mid-2023 to Nov 2024 she was a post-doctoral researcher in the Vrije Universitat Brussel with Dr Christophe Snoeck. Emese’s expertise is in bone diagenesis and taphonomy, bone histology, burnt bone and broader archaeological and forensic sciences. Her ESPRIT post-doctoral research project is focussing on the AMS dating of compound-specific molecules extracted from archaeological bones in the tropics.
Photo: © University of Vienna / Der Knopfdrücker
Dora Kosak
Project Administrator
Dora is filling in for Viktoria Neuhold- Erben while she is on maternity leave. She takes care of all personnel, financial and general matters for the Higham lab.
Viktoria Neuhold-Erben
Project Administrator (currently on maternity leave)
Viktoria joined the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology in September 2021. She looks after all personnel, financial and administrative matters for us.
Photo: © University of Vienna / Der Knopfdrücker
Students
Emily Pigott
PhD student
Emily finished her MSc in Geobiology and Paleobiology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich before she joined us in Vienna in April 2023. She is working in several parts of Europe on radiocarbon AMS dating and ZooMS, most particularly the Crimean Peninsula, using refined pretreatment methods to improve our understanding of final Neanderthal populations in eastern Europe.
Andreas Pfemeter
MSc student
Andreas is an MSc student in the Life Sciences faculty working on understanding the contamination mechanisms in open air Palaeolithic sites. He is applying a series of different pretreatment chemistries to determine the most robust approaches to reliable AMS dating at the site of Sesselfelsgrotte, Germany.
Photo: © University of Vienna / Der Knopfdrücker
Alisa Redtenbacher
MSc student
Alisa studied Anthropology and Archaeology at Durham University before coming to Vienna in late 2022 for her MSc. She is currently working for her MSc dissertation on the sequence from the Palaeolithic sites of Geissenklösterle (Swabian Jura), Lommersum (Germany) and Abri Castanet (France).
Katharina Luftensteiner
MSc student
Katharina finished her BSc in Biology at the University of Vienna in 2022 and is now doing her MSc in Evolutionary Anthropology. She is involved in projects at the Natural History Museum (Department of Anthropology) and works on her MSc dissertation in the Higham lab which is concerned with developing non-destructive protocols to AMS dating of specific samples.
Alma Kotevski
MSc student
Alma is a Masters student at Higham lab. She finished her BSc in Evolutionary Anthropology in 2017 at the University of Vienna. At the moment she is an MSc Student focused on Neanderthals, radiocarbon dating and human evolution.
Leslie Lodge
MSc student
Simona Planciková
MSc student
Simona is now doing her MSc in Evolutionary Anthropology in the Higham lab. She is working on improved methods of collagen extraction from archaeological bone.