We are delighted to welcome Jun Sun to the ESTER team as a postdoctoral researcher, strengthening the project’s expertise in statistical modelling and quantitative approaches to reconstructing prehistoric population dynamics.
Jun will play a central role in developing ESTER’s Bayesian modelling framework. A particular challenge lies in accounting for the different ways these sources reflect past demographic processes. His work will focus on advancing hierarchical statistical models that allow us to learn from multiple lines of evidence while explicitly addressing uncertainty across spatial and temporal scales. In doing so, he will help tackle one of ESTER’s central methodological challenges: how to draw robust demographic inferences from incomplete, heterogeneous, and sometimes contradictory archaeological records.
Beyond the development of individual models, Jun’s contributions will be instrumental in establishing a flexible and reproducible analytical framework that can be applied across different regions, periods, and research questions.
We look forward to working with Jun as we take the next steps towards a more integrated, uncertainty-aware understanding of long-term population dynamics. Welcome to the team!