Alice May Roberts (born 19 May 1973) is a British academic, anatomist, archaeologist, TV presenter and author. Since 2012 she has been professor of Public Engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham. She was president of the charity Humanists UK from January 2019 to May 2022, and is now a vice-president of the organisation.
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Early life and education
Roberts was born in Bristol in 1973, the daughter of an aeronautical engineer and an English and arts teacher. She grew up in the Bristol suburb of Westbury-on-Trym, where she attended the private Red Maids' School. Roberts has said that her fascination with the ancient past was sparked by watching a video of a live unwrapping of a mummy at Bristol Museum when she was aged 8.
In December 1988, Roberts won the BBC1 Blue Peter Young Artists competition, appearing with her picture and the presenters on the front cover of the 10 December 1988 edition of the Radio Times.
Roberts studied medicine at the University of Wales College of Medicine (now part of Cardiff University) and graduated in 1997 with a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MB BCh) degree, having gained an intercalated Bachelor of Science degree in anatomy. In 2008, after seven years, she completed her PhD in paleopathology, the study of disease in ancient human remains.
Research and career
After graduating, Roberts worked as a junior doctor with the National Health Service in South Wales for 18 months. In 1998, she left clinical medicine and worked as an anatomy demonstrator at the University of Bristol, becoming a lecturer there in 1999.
She spent seven years working part-time on her PhD in paleopathology, receiving the degree in 2008. She was a senior teaching fellow at the University of Bristol Centre for Comparative and Clinical Anatomy, where her main roles were teaching clinical anatomy, embryology, and physical anthropology, as well as researching osteoarchaeology and paleopathology. She stated in 2009 that she was working towards becoming a professor of anatomy.
In 2009, she co-presented modules for the Beating Bipolar programme, the first online treatment package for bipolar depression, trialled by Cardiff University researchers. A clinical trial began in June 2009 involving about 100 patients with bipolar disorder in South Wales.
From August 2009 until January 2012, Roberts was a visiting fellow in both the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology and the Department of Anatomy of the University of Bristol.
From 2009 to 2016 Roberts was Director of Anatomy at the NHS Severn Deanery School of Surgery and also an honorary fellow at Hull York Medical School.
In February 2012, Roberts was appointed the University of Birmingham's first Professor of Public Engagement in Science.
Roberts has been a member of the advisory board of Cheltenham Science Festival for 10 years and a member of the Advisory Board of the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath since 2018.
Writing in the i newspaper in 2016, Roberts dismissed the aquatic ape hypothesis (AAH) as a distraction "from the emerging story of human evolution that is more interesting and complex", adding that AAH has become "a theory of everything" that is simultaneously "too extravagant and too simple". She concluded by saying that "science is about evidence, not wishful thinking".
Television career
Roberts first appeared on television in the Time Team Live 2001 episode, working on Anglo-Saxon burials at Breamore, Hampshire. She served as a bone specialist and general presenter in many episodes, including the spin-off series Extreme Archaeology. In August 2006, Roberts was one of the main presenters for the Time Team special episode Big Royal Dig, which investigated archaeology of Britain's royal palaces.
A presenter of science and history television documentaries, Roberts was one of the regular co-presenters of the BBC geographical and environmental series Coast.
Roberts wrote and presented a BBC Two series on anatomy and health entitled Dr Alice Roberts: Don't Die Young, which was broadcast from January 2007. She presented a five-part series on human evolution and early human migrations for BBC Two entitled The Incredible Human Journey, beginning on 10 May 2009. In September 2009, she co-presented (with doctor Mark Hamilton) A Necessary Evil?, a one-hour documentary about the Burke and Hare murders.
In August 2010, she presented a one-hour documentary on BBC Four, Wild Swimming, inspired by Roger Deakin's book Waterlog. Roberts presented a four-part BBC Two series on archaeology in August–September 2010, Digging for Britain. Roberts explained, "We're taking a fresh approach by showing British archaeology as it's happening out in the field, from the excitement of artefacts as they come out of the ground, through to analysing them in the lab and working out what they tell us about human history." The show was successful and aired its thirteenth series in early 2026. In February 2026, Roberts announced that she would be leaving the show after 15 years.
In March 2011, she presented a BBC documentary in the Horizon series entitled Are We Still Evolving? Later that year she presented another documentary, How to Build a Dinosaur, which aired on BBC Four on 21 September 2011.
She presented the series Origins of Us, which aired on BBC Two in October 2011, examining how the human body has adapted through seven million years of evolution. The last part of this series featured Roberts visiting the Rift Valley in East Africa.
Awards and honours
In 2011, Roberts was elected an honorary fellow of the British Science Association, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. In 2014, she was selected by the Science Council as one of their leading UK practising scientists. During 2014, she was President of The Association for Science Education, and presented the Morgan-Botti lecture.
Roberts has received honorary doctorates (DSc) from Royal Holloway, University of London; Bournemouth University; the Open University, the University of Leeds,, and the University of Leicester; honorary Doctor of Medicine (MD) from the University of Sussex; and honorary Doctor of Education from the University of Bath.
In 2019, she was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by Cardiff University.
Roberts was awarded British Humanist of the Year 2015, for work promoting the teaching of evolution in schools.
The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being was shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize 2015.
In 2020, Roberts won the Royal Society David Attenborough Award and Lecture.
On 22 May 2022, Roberts unveiled the Statue of Mary Anning at Lyme Regis; the statue was the result of a crowdfunded campaign ("Mary Anning Rocks") to commission and display a statue to the palaeontologist Mary Anning in Lyme Regis.
In 2025, Roberts's book Crypt: life, death, and disease in the Middle Ages and beyond won Current Archaeology's Book of the Year award for 2025.
Personal life
Roberts lives with her husband, David Stevens, and two children, a daughter born in 2010 and a son born in 2013. She met her husband in Cardiff in 1995 when she was a medical student and he was an archaeology student. They married in 2009.
Roberts was estranged from her parents for several years before her mother's death, and did not attend her funeral. Her rejection of her parents' Christianity led to the relationship breach.
Roberts is a pescatarian, "a confirmed atheist" and humanist. She is the former president of Humanists UK, beginning her three-and-a-half-year term in January 2019. She is now a vice president of the organisation. Her children were assigned a faith school due to over-subscription of her local community schools; she campaigns against state-funded religious schools, citing her story as an example of the problems perpetuated by faith schools.
Roberts enjoys painting and drawing, gardening, yoga, cycling and swimming. Roberts is an organiser of the Cheltenham Science Festival and school outreach programmes within the University of Bristol's Medical Sciences Division. In March 2007, she hosted the Bristol Medical School's charity dance show Clicendales 2007, to raise funds for the charity CLIC Sargent.
Roberts took her baby daughter with her when touring for the six-month filming of the first series of Digging for Britain in 2010.
In March 2024 Roberts was the guest for BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, where her musical choices included "Monkey Gone to Heaven" by the Pixies, "Temple of Love" by The Sisters of Mercy, and "Sugar" by System of a Down.
Publications
Roberts is an author. She has authored or co-authored a number of peer reviewed scientific articles in journals. Her published books include:
Proceedings of the 6th Annual Conference of the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology. Archaeopress. 2007. ISBN 978-1-4073-0035-1. OCLC 124507736.
Robson-Brown, Kate; Roberts, Alice (2007). BABAO 2004 : Proceedings of the 6th Annual Conference of the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology, University of Bristol. British Archaeological Reports. Oxford, England: Archaeopress. ISBN 978-1-4073-0035-1.
Don't Die Young: An Anatomist's Guide to Your Organs and Your Health. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2007. ISBN 978-0-7475-9025-5. OCLC 81195249.
The Incredible Human Journey. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2009. ISBN 978-0-7475-9839-8. OCLC 646959203.
The Complete Human Body. Dorling Kindersley. 2010. ISBN 978-1-4053-4749-5. OCLC 951155923.
Evolution The Human Story. Dorling Kindersley. 2011. ISBN 978-1-4053-6165-1. OCLC 1038452947. Revised edition (2018), Dorling Kindersley, ISBN 978-1-4654-7401-8
Human anatomy: the definitive visual guide. Dorling Kindersley, 2014. ISBN 9780241292082, OCLC 1010946584
The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being: Evolution and the Making of Us. Heron Books. 2014. ISBN 978-1-8486-6477-7. OCLC 910702281.
The Celts: Search for a Civilisation. Heron Books. 2015. ISBN 978-1784293321. OCLC 967497115.
Tamed: Ten Species that Changed our World. Hutchinson Books. 2017. ISBN 978-1786330611. OCLC 1038452971.