Steve Webb

Professor Webb received his B.A (Hons). and Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology and Pre-History from the Australian National University in Canberra. He was Lecturer at the Australian National University in 1984 lecturing in Human Evolution, Archaeology, Palaeoanthropology, and Palaeopathology. In 1986 he was appointed Research Fellow at the Research School of Pacific Studies, ANU conducting extensive research on the oldest human remains in Australia. He has given many guest lectures in universities around Australia and internationally across Europe and  North and South America. His work and expertise have been featured in Time Magazine and various national and international news media as well as making documentaries with National Geographic, Discovery Channel, BBC, ABC and NHK Tokyo Broadcasting. 

He has worked extensively with Aboriginal communities and museums around Australia playing a significant role in repatriating ancestral skeletal remains from Australian and overseas museums to Aboriginal communities. That work has given him a broad understanding of contemporary issues facing Aboriginal people. His research papers have been published widely in national and international journals. His books include Palaeopathology of Aboriginal Australians,The Willandra Lakes Hominids, The First Boat People,Corridors to Extinction and the Australian Megafauna and Out of Africa with publishers including Cambridge University Press and Elsevier. 

Professor Webb’s recent interdisciplinary research has focused on Australian palaeoclimate, the palaeontology and palaoecology of extinct megafauna, and Australia’s environmental changes over the last 250,000 years. That has required 25 years of extensive field work around Lake Eyre, and in the Tanami, Gibson and Simpson Deserts.  He is at present Professor of Australian Studies at Bond University, Gold Coast and is writing a book about animal extinctions and climate change with a working title of: The End is Nigh