My research focuses on the construction of identity and cultural interaction. I am especially interested in the making of communities – not only their physical formation through landscape and architecture, but also their social formation through cultural practice, and their conceptual formation through the construction of identity.

My work to date has focused on these topics in relation to the Iron Age to Classical periods in the ancient Greek world and Anatolia, focusing in particular on the Greek cities of Ionia and Cilicia, but also on Troy and myths of the Trojan War. My current project expands the geographical frame, considering migration and mobility around the Mediterranean in the Iron Age. 

I am also interested in wider engagement with the antiquity, and the politics of reception and heritage. I passionately believe that those of us who study the past also have a responsibility to the present. 

Scientific Focus Areas

• The Iron Age to Classical Greek world
• Ancient Anatolia
• Greek interactions with the ancient Near East
• Landscape and survey archaeology
• Ethnicity and race in antiquity
• Migration and colonisation in antiquity
• Communality and identity
• The use of antiquity in contemporary political discourse

Current Projects

• MIGMAG: Migration and the Making of the Ancient Greek World (https://www.migmag-erc.eu)
• The Lower Göksu Archaeological Salvage Survey (https://klass-archaeologie.univie.ac.at/forschung/forschungsprojekte/laufend/the-lower-goeksu-archaeological-salvage-survey-project-lgassp/)
• The Metauros Archaeological Project (https://klass-archaeologie.univie.ac.at/forschung/forschungsprojekte/laufend/metauros-archaeological-project-map/)
• The West Area of Samos Archaeological Project (https://klass-archaeologie.univie.ac.at/forschung/forschungsprojekte/laufend/the-west-area-of-samos-archaeological-project-wasap/)

Key Activities

• Academic Editor, Anatolian Studies journal
• Series Editor, 'Approaches to Ancient History' series, Mohr Siebeck
• Editorial Board Member, The Classical Review journal
• Editorial Board Member, Global Antiquities journal
• Editorial Board Member, ‘Antiquity in Global Context’ series, Cambridge University Press
• Editorial Board Member, Penn Museums Publications Committee
• Fellow, Society of Antiquaries UK
• Member of the Network Core Group, European Network for the Study of Ancient Greek History
• Corresponding Member, Archaeological Association of America 
• Key Researcher, Cluster of Excellence 'Eurasian Transformations'

List of Publications (selected)

Books

• 2023: The West: A New History of an Old Idea. London: Ebury. [Published with Dutton in the USA; Ullstein in Germany and Austria; Planeta in Spain and Mexico; Saida de Emergenca in Portugal; Jorge Zahar Editoria in Brazil; Paju Books in Korea; China Times Publishing Company in Taiwan; and Peking University Press in China.]
  • BBC Radio 4 ‘Book of the Week’ in May 2023
  • Reviews include: The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.
• 2018. Troy: Myth, City, Icon. London: Bloomsbury.
• 2018, mit J. Haywood. Homer’s Iliad and the Trojan War: Dialogues on Tradition. London: Bloomsbury.
• (ed). 2015. Foundation Myths in Ancient Societies: Dialogues and Discourses. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
• 2013. Foundation Myths and Politics in Ancient Ionia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• 2011. Community Identity and Archaeology: Dynamic Communities at Aphrodisias and Beycesultan. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Journal articles

• 2023. Divergent Perspectives – Discussion and Debate: Exploring Mediterranean Connections and Iron Age Entanglements’, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 36.2: 226-267.
• 2021. ‘Regional identities in the Greek world: myth and koinon in Ionia’, Historia 70: 268-314.
• 2017. 'Separating Fact from Fiction in the Ionian Migration', Hesperia 38: 379-421.
• 2010. ‘Hittites and Arzawans: A view from western Anatolia’, Anatolian Studies 60: 7-24
• 2009. ‘Beyond Ethnicity: The Overlooked Diversity of Group Identities’. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 22.1: 101-126.
• 2004. ‘Social Complexity and Population: A Study in the Early Bronze Age Aegean', Papers of the Institute of Archaeology 15: 53-66.

Book chapters (selected)

• 2022. 'MÖ 2. Binyılın Sonlarında Batı Anadolu ve "İon Göçü" Sonrunu / Western Anatolia through the end of the second millennium BC and the Question of the "Ionian Migration"', in E. Koparal and Y. Ersoy (eds) Ionialılar: Ege Kıyılarının Bilge Sakinleri / Ionians: Sages of the Aegean Shore. Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 72-79.
• 2021. ‘Race and Ethnicity’, in D. McCoskey (ed.) A Cultural History of Race. Volume I: Antiquity, London: Bloomsbury.
• 2020.  'Herodotus and the 1919-1922 Greco-Turkish War', in J. Skinner and T. Harrison (eds) Herodotus in the Long Nineteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 224-243.
• with P.S.Wells. 2019. 'Edges and Interactions Beyond Europe.' in C. Haselgrove, P.S. Wells and K. Rebay-Salisbury (eds) The Oxford Handbook of the European Iron Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• 2018. 'Failed nostoi and foundations: Kalchas at Kolophon', in G. Biffis and S. Hornblower eds. Nostoi: Traditions about Mediterranean Settlement. 235-266. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 619-654.
• with T.E. Şerifoğlu. 2017. 'Never the Same River Twice: The Göksu Valley Through the Ages', in Y. Heffron, A. Stone and M. Worthington (eds) At the Dawn of History. Near Eastern Studies in Honour of J.N. Postgate. 335-354. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.
• 2016. ‘Anatolian-Aegean connectivity in the Early Iron Age’, in B. Molloy (ed.) Scales and Modes of Interaction Between Prehistoric Aegean Societies and their Neighbours. Sheffield Studies in Aegean Archaeology, 411-434. Oxford: Oxbow.
• 2016. 'Connectivity and Globalization in the Bronze Age of Anatolia', in T. Hodos (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Globalization and Archaeology, 855-870. London and New York: Routledge.
• 2015. ‘Violence and the Ionian Migration: Representation and Reality’, in Ç. Maner, K. Kopanias and N. Stampolidis (eds) Nostoi: Indigenous Culture, Migration and Integration in the Aegean Islands and Western Anatolia during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age. Istanbul: Koç University Press.
• 2013. 'Autour des mythes de fondation de Chios et de Samos', in O. Mariaud (ed.) Communautés nouvelles dans l'Antiquité grecque. Mouvements, intégrations et représentations. Bordeaux: Ausonius.
• 2012. ‘A Land without Autochthons: Anatolian archaeology in the early twentieth century’. In R. Matthews and J, Curtis (eds) Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, 12th-16th April 2010. Volume 2 (Oxford: Oxbow), 63-72
• 2011. ‘Strange and Estranged: Perceiving cultural contacts in Late Bronze Age – Early Iron Age Anatolia’, in K. Duisterrnaat and I. Regulski (eds) Intercultural Contacts in the Ancient Mediterranean. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 202. Peeters. p67-77
• 2008. ‘The Meaning of “Mycenaean”’, in Menozzi, O., Di Marzio, M.L., and Fossataro, D. (eds) SOMA 2005. Proceedings of the IX Symposium on Mediterranean Archaeology, Chieti (Italy). Oxford: BAR Archaeopress.

Curriculum Vitae

2000-2003
BA-Studium der Altertumswissenschaft an der University of Cambridge

2003-2004
MA-Studium der Alten Geschichte an der University College London

2004-2006
Assistentin, Abteilung für Antike, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

2004-2007
Doktoratsstudium der Klassischen Archäologie an der University of Cambridge, mit der Dissertation „Community Identity in Protohistoric Western Anatolia”

2007-2008
Research Fellow, Donor Committee for Enterprise Development, UK

2008-2010
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge

2011-2015
Lecturer (Assistant Professor), University of Leicester, UK

2015-2020
Associate Professor, University of Leicester, UK

2017
Research Fellow, Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University, USA

Seit 2019

Elected Fellow, Society of Antiquaries, UK

Seit 2019
Akademische Editorin, Anatolian Studies journal

2020

Professor, University of Leicester, UK

Seit Oktober 2020
„Principal Investigator ERC Consolidator Grant MIGMAG – Migration and the Making of the Ancient Greek World

Seit Oktober 2020

Professorin für Klassische Archäologie, Institut für Klassische Archäologie, Universität Wien

Seit 2021
Corresponding Member, Archaeological Institute of America

Seit 2023
Key Researcher, Cluster of Excellence 'Eurasian Transformations'

2025
Getty Villa Scholar, Los Angeles