Winner of the 2025
Huxley Memorial Medal & Lecture
Emeritus Leverhulme Professor of Human Evolution and a Fellow of the Turing institute
Robert is an evolutionary and biological anthropologist, with a focus on the hominin lineage and the development of novel methods and models for analysing patterns and processes in human evolution.
His research integrates fossils, genetics and archaeology and encompasses the application of evolutionary models to human evolution, the origins of modern humans, speciation and extinction in hominins, as well as social evolution and hunter-gatherer ecology. Rob Foley has published multiple scientific papers and two influential books – Another Unique Species (1987), and Humans Before Humanity (1997).
Robert co-founded the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies with Marta Mirazón Lahr. Alongside monographs and edited volumes, Rob Foley has published widely in major scientific journals including Nature, Science and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (H index 54).
He has supervised more than 30 PhD students many of whom are now established in academic roles around the world.