Talk abstract: South Africa has an extraordinary record of human evolution. Knowing how old sites are is a critical piece of the puzzle and my own work has focused on adapting the U-series chronometer to be applicable to a range of South African sites of varying ages. Human evolution research in South Africa has received international attention for nearly a century and is vast and broad in terms of research foci. However, the leading researchers have been almost entirely men, with women and people of colour under-represented, and black women largely absent. The Human Evolution Research Institute (HERI) at the University of Cape Town (UCT) has set out to disrupting, transform and decolonise this patriarchal narrative of human evolution in South Africa.