Profile

I come from Normandy in France but have lived in England since 2006. In 2014, I moved from Durham to Oxford. I’ve always wanted to be an archaeologist, and it is wonderful to have made this dream come true. Now, I look at the domestication of animals and how animals and people have moved in the past by combining archaeology and DNA. It’s a great mix!
When not at work, I spend my evenings and weekends practicing and coaching parkour (or free running) at Oxford Parkour Community.
As well as parkour, I also design the lights for theatre plays and festivals.  All these activities keep me very busy, but nourish my experience of life.

I haven’t always lived in France and England though. I have also grown up in Morocco and Malaysia and travelled to all continents except Antartica. Hopefully, I will do that one soon! It’s on my wish list.

Finally, I love reading and I always have a book in my bag. You never know when you might need it! My favourite book is Veronica Roth’s ‘Carve the Mark’.

My work is very varied. I am an archaeologist, so I go on excavations to dig up new sites. But I am also a geneticist, so when I am not outside digging, I am in the lab trying to get the DNA from animal bones. And of course, I also do a lot of computer work when I have to interpret the results in relation to the archaeology. When I have my results, I publish them and I go to conferences across the world to present them to the rest of the archaeologists.

I am very interested in how/when/where people moved in the past. People almost always move with their animals like cattle, sheep, pigs, dogs, chickens so I look at people’s movements by looking at their animals. I also look at how people behaved towards their animals in the past and why they kept their animal.

I usually start my day at 8am by going into the lab for 3-5hours. There, I extract DNA from the bones that I got from museums, or from bones that were sent to us by museums and other archaeologists. I then have  lunch break during which I go outside to enjoy the sun and recharge in fresh air. The rest of my afternoon consists of either more lab work or working at my computer replying to the emails of other researchers, writing up my results or preparing for conferences. I leave work around 6-7pm and head out to parkour or the theatre to finish my day with yet another activity I love.