Dr Michela Leonardi

  • Research Associate
Dr Michela Leonardi

Contact

Connect

Location

  • Main Zoology Building
  • Room F21

About

I studied prehistoric archaeology in Ferrara (Northern Italy) and obtained my PhD in Anthropology at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz (Germany).

Among others, I worked in Paris (Musée de l’Homme), London (UCL) and Bern and Copenhagen Universities. I am currently splitting my time between the Department of Zoology in Cambridge and the Natural History Museum in London, where I work part-time as a biodiversity modeller.

Evolutionary Ecology Group

Research

I am an evolutionary biologist reconstructing species and population dynamics through time. I do so by integrating data and methods from different fields: ecology, archaeology, palaeoclimatology, and population genetics.

In my career, I have been working on various research questions focussing on humans, animals and plants. Here are a few projects I have carried out in recent years:

  • Modelling ecological dynamics through time
  •  Large-scale palaeoecological analyses 
  • Software development for ecology and palaeoecology 
  • The impact of climate on human evolutionary genomics
  • Current biodiversity modelling
  •  Ancient DNA
Outreach

I always tried to keep in touch with the public, for example, by collaborating with the Museum of Zoology in Cambridge on a number of activities, giving talks at science festivals (mostly in Italy), and doing outreach with schoolchildren. I also published Climate change – the board game: an educational board game about climate change and evolution, which can be freely downloaded or played online.

 

Key publications

EY Hallett, M Leonardi(co-first), JN Cerasoni, M Will, R Beyer, M Krapp, AW Kandel, A Manica, EML Scerri (2025) Major expansion in the human niche preceded out of Africa dispersal. Nature, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09154-0

M Leonardi, M Colucci, AV Pozzi, EML Scerri, A Manica (2024) tidysdm: leveraging the flexibility of tidymodels for Species Distribution Modelling in R. Methods in Ecology and Evolution: 15(10): 1789-1795. Package website

M Leonardi, EY Hallett, R Beyer, M Krapp, A Manica (2023) pastclim 1.2: an R package to easily access and use paleoclimatic reconstructions. Ecography, 2023(3): e06481. Package website

M Leonardi, F Boschin, P Boscato, A Manica (2022) Following the niche: the differential impact of the Last Glacial Maximum on four European ungulates. Communications Biology, 5: 1038. 

M Leonardi, F. Boschin, K. Giampoudakis, R.M. Beyer, M. Krapp, R. Bendrey, R. Sommer, P. Boscato, A. Manica, D. Noguez-Bravo, L. Orlando (2018) Late Quaternary horses in Eurasia in the face of climate and vegetation change. Science Advances 4(7), eaar5589.

M Leonardi, A Sandionigi, A Conzato, S Vai, M Lari, S Ghirotto, F Tassi, D Caramelli, G Barbujani (2018) The female ancestor’s tale: long-term matrilineal continuity in a non-isolated region of Tuscany. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 167:497–506.

M Leonardi, G. Barbujani, A. Manica (2017) An earlier revolution: genetic and genomic analyses reveal pre-existing cultural differences leading to Neolithization. Scientific Reports 7(1): 3525.

M Leonardi, P Librado, C Der Sarkissian, M Schubert, AH Alfarhan, SA Alquraishi, KAS Al-Rasheid, C Gamba, E Willerslev, L Orlando (2017) Evolutionary Patterns and Processes: Lessons from Ancient DNA. Systematic Biology, 66 (1), e1-e29.

Full list of publications: https://scholar.google.it/citations?user=XvhalZsAAAAJ

 

Teaching and supervision

I have contributed individual lessons to several courses at the University of Cambridge: “Evolution and Comparative Anatomy of Mammals” (BSc level), “Computational Archaeology” (BSc level), “Ancient Biomolecules”.