Stephan Schiffels obtained his PhD in theoretical physics in 2012 at the University of Cologne, Germany.

His thesis covered the statistical properties of evolutionary processes in genomes. He continued as a postdoctoral fellow at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK, where Schiffels developed an influential method to derive human demographic history from present-day genomes. This research shows that we can infer migration patterns and major bottlenecks in human evolution from genomic data.

In 2015, he became a group leader at the newly founded Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, where he developed methods to derive patterns of human history from ancient DNA. In 2020, Schiffels transferred his group to the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

His recent publications cover investigations into our human migratory past, from the peopling of the Americas during the late Pleistocene to more recent migrations associated with the spread of agriculture in Africa. More recently, he has researched major historical processes, such as the Anglo-Saxon migration into Britain after the end of the Roman Empire.

Schiffels’s research has been covered by major German news media outlets. Internationally, he has appeared on television as an expert on genetics and history. He gives public lectures and is passionate about disseminating his research at the interface of genetics and human history.