Martin B. Richards

Martin B. Richards is Professor of Archaeogenetics at the University of Huddersfield, UK. He studied genetics at the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester, moving into archaeogenetic research at the University of Oxford in 1990. He subsequently moved to UCL, the University of Huddersfield, the University of Leeds, and finally back to Huddersfield in 2012, to take up a Research Chair in Archaeogenetics.

Martin's research, with colleagues from across the world (especially Portugal, Italy, Spain, Germany, the US and within the UK), has particularly sought to apply mitochondrial genome variation to archaeogenetic questions, such as the route taken by modern humans dispersing out of Africa and the settlement of Southeast Asia and the Pacific – most recently returning to the controversy over the settlement of Europe, with a broadening focus to take in genome-wide variation and palaeogenetics, with a purpose-built ancient DNA facility at Huddersfield.

Martin co-edited Mitochondrial DNA and the Evolution of Homo Sapiens (Springer-Verlag, 2006) with Hans-Jürgen Bandelt and Vincent Macaulay, and since 2015 he has run a Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship programme in evolutionary genomics, entitled Genetic Journeys into History: The Next Generation, in the School of Applied Sciences at Huddersfield.