Penny Spikins is currently Senior Lecturer at the University of York, Department of Archaeology. Her early research centered on Mesolithic northern England where she retains an interest and enthusiasm, although she is best known for her later research into the evolution of social emotions and the significance of care for the vulnerable in human origins.  Penny has directed a major excavation project at Mesolithic sites in the Pennines, and underwater archaeological fieldwork in the North-East. Her published volumes include Mesolithic Europe (CUP) with Geoff Bailey, Prehistoric People of the Pennines (West Yorkshire Archaeology Service) and Mesolithic northern England: Environment, Population and Settlement (BAR). Over the last ten years she has particularly focused on cognitive and social evolution, publishing papers on the evolution of compassion (Time and Mind), dynamics of egalitarianism (Journal of World Prehistory), the origins of autism (Cambridge Archaeological Journal), evolution of self control and display in artefacts (World Archaeology) and Neanderthal childhood (Oxford Archaeological Journal).

Her latest book, How Compassion Made Us Human, argues that a selection for pro-social emotional motivations has been the driving force behind human evolution