Chris Stringer is Merit Researcher in Human Origins at the London Natural History Museum. His early research concentrated on the relationship of Neanderthals and early modern humans in Europe, but his current research interests extend as far back as Homo habilis and as far geographically as China and Australia. He has been closely involved in the development of the Out of Africa theory of modern human origins and now collaborates with a number of archaeologists, dating specialists and geneticists in attempting to reconstruct the evolution of modern humans. He has have also directed or co-directed excavations at Pleistocene sites in England, Wales and Gibraltar, and is currently directing the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB), funded by the the Leverhulme Trust. AHOB is a 5-year project to reconstruct the pattern of the earliest human colonisation of England and Wales.