Robert Harding - Honorary Lecturer

IoA involvement:

Robert gained his PhD from Cambridge University with a landscape survey of Rajgir in eastern India. He has since surveyed Kanyakumari District, the heartland of the South Indian kingdom of Travancore. He was also part of the excavation team of Vizhinjam, a medieval capital and port site linked to the Indian Ocean trade network. Among other issues the excavations raised questions about the archaeological visibility of distinctions between ports engaged in long-distance trade and those tied to more local exchange circuits. In 2019 he was involved in the start of excavations at another medieval site, Nani Rayan, in Kutch (Gujarat).

He has been involved with the Institute since 2003-5, when he was temporary Lecturer in South Asian Archaeology. He was also Secretary of the 2005 European Association of South Asian Archaeologists Conference in London, sponsored by the Institute along with the British Academy and the British Museum. He was Teaching Fellow in 2014/15 when he coordinated ARCL0154 Archaeology of Buddhism and ARCL0050 Archaeology of Early South Asia, and was acting coordinator for the same modules in Term 2 of 2019/20. Otherwise he contributes individual lectures to these modules, as well as to ARCL0153 Archaeological Heritage Management in Asia and ARCL0052 Archaeology and Art of Early Historic South Asia. His 15 years of teaching the topic of Indianisation has prompted him to start writing a book on the subject.