Ruth Mace

Ruth Mace FBA (born 9 October 1961) is a British anthropologist, biologist, and academic. She specialises in the evolutionary ecology of human demography and life history, and phylogenetic approaches to culture and language evolution. Since 2004, she has been Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at University College London.

Early life and education Mace was born on 9 October 1961 in London, England to David Mace and Angela Mace. She was educated at South Hampstead High School, an all-girls private school in South Hampstead, London, and at Westminster School, an independent school within the precincts of Westminster Abbey that has a mixed-sex sixth form. She studied zoology at Wadham College, Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1983 and a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree in 1987.

Academic career Having completed her doctorate, Mace began her academic career as a research fellow at Imperial College London; she held a NERC Postdoctoral Fellowship. Then, from 1989 to 1991, she was a lecturer in the School of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia.

In 2004, she was appointed Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology. Since 2010, she has served as Head of Biological Anthropology at University College London. In 2008, she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences.

Selected works