Until December 2018 Professor Marlize Lombard was appointed as Director of the Centre for Anthropological Research at the University of Johannesburg. In 2019, the unit became the Palaeo-Research Institute where she now serve as Research Chair with the mandate to develop a new hub for human origins research in southern Africa. As a Professor of Stone Age archaeology, she lead the inter-disciplinary Palaeo-TrACKS (Tracing Ancient Cognition and Knowledge Systems through the Stone Age/Palaeolithic) Research Programme with collaborators from across the globe, and have recently established Hu-MAP (Humans of the Magaliesberg Archaeological Project) with colleagues from the Institute. She received her MSc and PhD degrees in archaeology from the Science Faculty of the University of the Witwatersrand, where she was one of the initial members of the then Institute for Human Evolution. Prior to that, she was an Assistant Director of the KwaZulu-Natal Museum and Head of Archaeology and Anthropology at that institution. She currently serve on the editorial boards of three journals, and have served as Editor in Chief of the South African Archaeological Bulletin (2023-2015). In 2015 she was nominated, for the University of Johannesburg’s Vice Chancellor’s Distinguished Award in Global Excellence and Stature. In 2018 she was second runner-up for the ‘South African Women in Science Award’ bestowed by the Department of Science and Technology, and in the same year she won the University of Johannesburg Vice Chancellor’s Distinguished Award for Outstanding Research.
