BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH – Dr Stephen Oppenheimer
I trained in Medicine at Oxford and London, qualifying in 1971. During my medical training I
decided to specialise in child health in the tropics. Over the 25 years between 1972-1997, I spent a total
of 17 years working as a paediatrician in the tropics, mainly in the Far East, Southeast Asia and New
Guinea, but also in Nepal and Africa. The rest of my time was spent back in England in university
clinical/clinical research posts at the Royal London Hospital, then in Oxford, and the Liverpool School of
Tropical Medicine. Several of these posts acted as the university bases from which I was seconded
overseas. I also carried out and published clinical research in the areas of nutrition, infectious disease
(including malaria), and genetics, focussing on the interactions between nutrition, genetics and
infection, in particular iron nutrition, thalassaemia and malaria (see publications).
I spent 3 years (1979-83) doing the fieldwork for my DM Thesis in New Guinea, studying the effects of
iron supplementation on susceptibility to infection. During my fieldwork, I made two additional
serendipitous discoveries: firstly that single-deletion alpha-thalassaemia genetic mutation had nearly
gone to fixation in malarious areas as a result of natural selection due to its protective effect against
malaria, secondly that different genotypes for alpha-thalassaemia traced different migrations out to the
Pacific. The results of the fieldwork were published in the late 1980’s and led me, during the 1990’s in
Hong Kong (where I held a Chair of Paediatrics) both to supervise in vitro studies on the mechanisms
underlying the iron and thalassaemia effects, and also subsequently to a new field, which changed my
whole career and research focus. This was the use of unique genetic mutations as markers of ancient
migrations (see publications)
I returned with my family to England from the Far East in 1997 for our children’s education. Our children
both attended school in Oxford and subsequently proceeded to study at Oxford University. Rather than
go back into Paediatrics immediately, I had decided to take time out to write a book on the Holocene
spread of peoples and culture round the Pacific and Indian Oceans. My publications from that point
onwards, mainly stem from that decision, since I continued to write books and articles and did not
return to clinical work.
My first book ‘Eden in the East: the drowned continent of Southeast Asia’ was published in hardback on
28th September 1998 and softback June1999. My reconstruction in the book involved a range of
disciplines climatology, oceanography, archaeology, linguistics, social anthropology and genetics. The
idea arose partly out of my research and experience in the Far East and the Southwest Pacific.
After publishing 'Eden in the East' I was approached by a film company to make a documentary on the
book and then worked as Series Consultant for a 2 X 1-hour series (“The Real Eve” - Discovery Channel
and “Out of Eden” – Channel 4) on genetic tracing of human origins based on my second book "Out of
Eden: the Peopling of the World" (book title: "The Real Eve" in USA). The series was jointly commissioned
by Channel 4 and Discovery Channel International, and the results generated on-going collaborative
genetic research with the Department of Antiquities Malaysia, Universities of Putra Malaysia (UPM),
Huddersfield, Leeds, Glasgow and Pavia.
I was consultant and talking head for a new BBC Science 5-parter on the modern human out of Africa
migration (“The Incredible Human Journey”), which came out May 2009.
I recently (2006/7) published a book on the post-glacial peopling of the British Isles in the same genre as
the previous two (Stephen Oppenheimer. “The Origins of the British: a genetic detective story”
Constable, London, 2006.).
The above activities have occupied me nearly full-time from 1997 up to date, but I have continued to be
involved in collaborative genetics research with geneticists Dr's Martin Richards & Vincent Macaulay and
others, publishing peer-reviewed papers and giving invited public lectures. I have raised £50,000 pounds
for the collaborative genetics work over the past 10 years (my previous grant-raising activities when in
Chair in Hong Kong are not included in this CV).
I also continue to write papers and reviews on my previous paediatric specialist research area (iron and
its interaction with infectious disease including malaria) and am invited periodically as expert to advise
on iron supplementation at WHO/UNICEF/USAID micronutrient planning meetings.
I was elected to Green College, Oxford in 1999. I am a research associate of the Institute of Cognitive
and Evolutionary Anthropology of the School of Anthropology, University of Oxford and also affiliated as
Honorary Research Fellow to the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.