I am studying ancient DNA since the beginning of my PhD, in 2012, and have seen evolving the field drastically. During the first years of next generation-sequencing techniques, we actively worked at understanding demographic events at a continental scale, necessary to lay the foundations of our knowledge of the characterisation of the past population genomic make-up. Over the very last years, methodological advancements in ancient DNA allowed us to apply more specific studies, either at individual levels with high-covered genomes, or at group levels with extensive sampling. The evolution of the field makes now possible finer analysis at local scales, exploring in particular biological relatedness and site organization, opening new windows in our approach of kinship in the past.
Thanks to two postdoctoral positions in Germany and in France between 2017 and 2022, and now with my current postdoctoral position in Ghent University, I built my research on studying Mesolithic and Neolithic populations in Western Europe (between ca. 12.000 and 5.000 years ago), questioning their demographic dynamics and social structures at a time of great cultural changes, i.e., the transition between a subsistence economy based on hunting and gathering to farming. My current position within the ROAM project specifically targets populations from Mesolithic and Neolithic Belgium, aiming to document the last hunter-gatherers and first farmers known on the territory.
