Dr Alice Williams

Alice Williams is an archaeobotanist and computational archaeologist whose work explores how plants, people, and environments have interacted to shape past societies. As part of the New Bantu Mosaics Project, she combines archaeobotanical evidence with computational modelling to reconstruct ancient food systems and migration patterns in southern Africa.

Her recent research has focused on using agent-based models to investigate why and how human communities became more complex over time. These models — simplified representations of reality — allow her to “re-run” the past under different environmental or social conditions, testing hypotheses about change and resilience that would otherwise be impossible to observe.

Alice’s broader research is driven by an interest in recovering the experiences of the often “invisible” individuals who shaped history. By bringing together narrative thinking and quantitative methods, she bridges the gap between human stories and computational simulations.

She holds a PhD in Biological Sciences from the University of Exeter, an MSt in Archaeology from the University of Oxford, and a BA in Archaeology and Anthropology from the University of Cambridge.

ORCID