Dr Bence Viola is an Associate Professor in the Department of Athropology and a paleoanthropologist focusing on the biological and cultural dynamics of the contacts between different hominin groups in the late Pleistocene. To better understand these interactions, he uses a combination of morphological, genetic and archaeological approaches. He concentrates on Central / Northern Asia and Central Europe, which are both areas where contacts between modern and archaic humans are thought to have taken place.

He is currently working on the description of new Neanderthal and Denisovan fossils from this region, and is also involved in ancient DNA analyses of these remains. He also conducts new fieldwork at Sel’ungur cave in Kyrgyzstan, where excavations in the 1980s recovered the oldest human remains from Central Asia.

Central Europe is one of the regions where Neanderthals and modern humans probably met. Together with colleagues from Austria , Germany and Hungary they are currently studying the late Neanderthals and first modern humans from this area, trying to understand when and how these contacts took place, and how these populations adapted to the changing environments of the late Pleistocene.