Ella is a National Geographic Explorer, palaeoanthropologist, evolutionary biologist…and stand-up comic. Her debut book The Handshake is a Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year. She specializes in Neanderthals, caves, and expeditions in hostile, disputed, and unstable territories. She almost exclusively works in places it is hard to get insurance, such as Iraq, Yemen, Nagorno-Karabakh, and places she can’t publicly admit to. From heading up exploratory expeditions to joining cave excavations, the conditions can be unusual—from avoiding landmines to wearing a burqa for security reasons.

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