PhD Supervisors

Complex adaptive systems; Computational Social Science; Mesopotamian history; social-ecological systems; social-ecological systems; Near East archaeology; data science; machine learning

South American Archaeology: Amazonia, Patagonia; Geoarchaeology, soil micromorphology; Human Niche-Building, Historical Ecology, Landscape History, Anthropogenic soils; Ethnoarchaeology, Cultural Transmission; Indigenous Archaeology

GIS and spatial analysis; Material culture and value; Mediterranean archaeology and history; Human settlement and landscape ecology; Archaeological survey and excavation methods

the theorisation and re-conceptualisation of cultural heritage studies; museum historiography and critical museological theory; the application of intellectual history, philosophy, psychoanalysis, literary theory, postcolonial theory, deconstruction and memory-studies to cultural heritage/ museum studies;the application of ethnographic methods and anthropological theory to cultural heritage / museum studies

themes of cultural loss and revivalism; critical studies of the archive; postcolonial politics of memory-work; cosmopolitanism and ethnicity; maritime heritage; cultural / human rights and marginalised histories; heritage and wellbeing; specialist focus upon North Africa and Eastern Mediterranean and upon Alexandrian / Egyptian and Palestinian cultural heritage and cultural politics.

Archaeological science (materials science and quantitative methods); Preindustrial technology; Pyrotechnology; Experimental archaeology; Cultural transmission theory; Evolutionary archaeology; World archaeology

Islamic and late antique archaeology, particularly on the themes of empire, urbanism, religion, environment and technology, as well as those working on North African archaeology (any period) or cultural heritage in the MENA region.  

Archaeobotany: Human Plant Use in Prehistory, from hunter-gatherer plant to use reconstructing agricultural systems and systems of plant cooking. The Origins and Spread of Agriculture: including plant domestication and arable ecology. Current or recent work has included the Near East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, China, Sudan and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, Britain, and the Caribbean. I have long fieldwork experience and knowledge of material cultural and social evolution for Nubia and India. I have broader interests in environmental archaeology, long-term environmental history and the “Anthropocene”.

The archaeology of the Roman world and early Medieval Europe, with a particular focus on Britain; Social theory in archaeology, including issues of identity, agency, and temporality; The archaeology of frontiers, boundaries and borderlands; Approaches to violence and warfare in past societies; The role of the past in contemporary politics; Archaeogaming - computer and video game archaeology.

Landscape archaeology: Later European Prehistory; Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and Polynesia; Sensory and gendered landscapes; Phenomenology; Rethinking archaeological field practice

Critical Heritage Studies; Heritage, multiculturalism and globalisation; Posthumanist theory and environmental humanities; Climate change and Anthropocene studies; Intangible and indigenous heritage; Museum studies; History and philosophy of conservation, museums, anthropology and archaeology; Archaeologies of the present and recent past; Contemporary material culture studies; Historical archaeology; Archaeologies of colonialism; Australian archaeology

Archaeologies of the recent and contemporary past in Africa, with special attention to southern Africa; heritage and political resistance in Africa; heritage and development, especially resource extraction; history of archaeological thought in and about sub-Saharan Africa; archival, ethnographic, and landscape methodologies; heritage teaching and learning methods

The development and use of quantitative and computational methods for studying the past, especially agent-based computer simulation and geographical information systems; the evolutionary origins of cultural transmission, Mesolithic settlement strategies in Scotland and the spread of farming in Neolithic Europe; the problem of memes and the manner in which human innovation explores design space. 

Geophysical survey in archaeology; Archaeological methods, especially in field archaeology, including field survey, photography, and excavation; Iron age and Roman archaeology and numismatics particularly in the UK and Romania; Multivariate Statistical methods; The archaeology and history of Hertfordshire.

West African Complex Societies;  African Historical Archaeology (including oral traditions); Historical Archaeology in the New World (especially concerning the African Diaspora); Pottery Analysis; Archaeolozoology; Prehistory of African Pastoralism

Zooarchaeology; The role of animals in past human societies; Hunting and herding practices in prehistoric western Asia; Animal domestications; production and consumption of animal foods; Mammalian ecology and ethology

Public archaeology; History of archaeology; Archaeology of the modern world; Conflict archaeology (focus on 20^th Century); The politics of the past; Decolonising archaeology; Conflict commemoration and memory studies; Material culture studies; Community archaeology

Knowledge construction and meaning-making in museums and other informal learning settings; The organisation of learning in family and other everyday contexts; Public engage with disciplinary knowledge and everyday knowledge; Museum learning in the digital age; Working with culturally and linguistically diverse audiences; Museum learning practice, knowledge co-production and professional identity; Practice-based research, reflective practice and action research

Archaeology in Egypt and Nubia from prehistory to Islam; funerary archaeology;  the social and political dimensions of archaeological practice; the production, appropriation and consumption of archaeological heritage places in the contemporary world.  

Caribbean Pre-Columbian and early European contact period history (archaeology, ethnohistory and historical linguistics); South American topical lowland Amerindian history (archaeology, ethnohistory, linguistics and ethnography);Epistemology and Theories of Chiefdom or ‘Middle Range’ Polities (Americas & Pacific) ; Development and evolution of subsistence economies of South America and the Caribbean; The materiality and networks of political-religious power (Amazonia and the Circum-Caribbean) ; Regional and Long-distance trade economy & exchange networks; Ethnogenesis

Stonehenge: its purpose and people; The Beaker people: diet and mobility in Britain 2500-1700BC; The Outer Hebrides: settlement and society from prehistory to the post-medieval period on the island of South Uist; Death and burial: funerary archaeology; Madagascar: society and change in the Indian Ocean; Prehistoric Britain and Europe in the 1st millennia BC and AD; Identifying mummification from skeletonised remains: soft tissue preservation in prehistoric Europe; Public archaeology and heritage; Ethnoarchaeology and material culture

I am an objects conservator with a background in fine art and a keen interest in ethics and conservation decision-making, especially how the interactions between tangible and intangible aspects of objects affect the conservation process. I have worked with different kinds of collections in South and North America, Europe and Africa. But I am especially interested in indigenous and archaeological collections from Latin America and Africa. At the moment, I am working on the conservation of lithics and fossils from Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania) and starting a research project about contemporary productions of bark cloth in South America.

Fieldwork strategies in Palaeolithic survey and excavation: Site formation processes and behavioural complexity in open air Palaeolithic site; Landscape use and adaptation in the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic; The early human occupation record of the La Manche region; The deep prehistory of the Anthropocene; Island Archaeology: Including the prehistoric record of vulnerable coastal and intertidal landscapes.

Thin Section Ceramic Petrography and Geochemistry; Prehistoric Ceramic Production and Consumption in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean; Pre-Contact Hunter Gatherer Ceramics of Southern California; Thin Section Petrography of Archaeological Ceramics of all Periods of UK; Application of Micropalaeontology to Archaeology; Ceramic Craft Technology and Organisation of Production in Qin Period China.

To move Egyptian Archaeology at UCL beyond traditional archaeological and philological research communities, by opening Egyptology to African and Arab World audiences, as a branch of cultural studies, applying anthropological reception of Gramsci.

To deploy archaeological collections and displays as a forum for debate in global social settings: Petrie Museum as a hub linking Public Archaeology IoA and Public Engagement UCL Museums and Collections.

Archaeomaterials: metals and ceramics; Origins and evolution of early metallurgy in Eurasia; Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Age archaeology and metallurgy in southeast Europe and the Eurasian Steppe; Silk Roads archaeology; Complex networks science and archaeology; Aesthetics of archaeological material culture; Archaeology and Public Engagement

Methodological advancement in forensic anthropology; Modern human skeletal variation; Digital approaches in forensic anthropology; Forensic taphonomy and estimating time since death: Cognitive bias in forensic anthropology; Congenital diseases of childhood; Ancient disease pathways.  General fields of interest:Forensic Anthropology, Bioarchaeology, Dental Anthropology, Palaeopathology, and Palaeoepidemiology

Later archaeology of eastern and southern Africa; Complex societies; Livestock management and butchery practices; The Archaeology of African and European contact; Contributions to the African Heritage and Archaeology website

The archaeology of early medieval societies in north-western Europe, especially Britain during the period AD700-1200, and the archaeology of standing buildings. Recent research themes include the archaeology of governance, the geography of burial in the landscape of early medieval England and the nature of physical, temporal and social boundaries as expressed in the archaeological record. Andrew is particularly interested in the methodologies employed by archaeologists working in documented periods.

Iron Age Italy and the 1st millennium BC in the Central Mediterranean: interaction between the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian Sea regions; comparative archaeology of the 1st-millennium BC Mediterranean; colonialism and colonisation; theoretical approaches to cultural contact and material culture; Mediterranean ‘marginal’ landscapes; Mediterranean Archaic economies and trade.

Archaeology and art of South Asia: urbanisation, religious history, state-formation, agriculture, land-use and environmental control, historical water studies, ecological history; sectarianism, politics and archaeology; landscape and survey archaeology; archaeology of sacred geography and 'natural places'; rock-art; Archaeology of Asian religions, especially Buddhism and Hinduism; Archaeology of medicine, healing and disability; Interfaces between archaeology, anthropocene studies, and the environmental humanities:  Archaeologies of environmental ethics and intellectual responses to climate change;  Historical attitudes towards 'nature' and human:animal:environment interactions; Archaeology, religion and ecology; Archaeology and environmental / climate-change activism. 

Application of biological evolutionary theory and methods to archaeology; Prehistoric demography; Ethnicity; Prehistoric social and economic institutions; cultural evolution, European Neolithic and Bronze Age

Archaeology and ethnography of the Andes; Ceramics; Material culture and technology; Biography of an artefact

The European Neolithic; Processes of Neolithisation; History of Archaeology; Lithic technology; Archaeological taphonomy

The material culture of the Levant in the Bronze and Iron Ages; Stone vessel production, distribution and use; Cultural interaction between Egypt and the Levant

The relationship between material culture and group identity; Canaanite burial customs; The history of archaeological research in British Mandate Palestine, including the work of Flinders Petrie at Tell el-‘Ajjul, Tell Fara and Tell Jemmeh.

Investigating the influence of climate on past human societies and the interaction of humans with their environment; Reconstructing the diet of past human and animal population through bimolecular techniques; Extending and developing isotope analysis methodologies (C, N, O, Sr, etc) to improve interpretations and reconstructions; Investigating the effects of climate and physiology on animal body isotopic values (hair, teeth, bones, antler);Upper Palaeolithic Archaeology

Museum collections and archives;  histories of museums and archaeology; museum archaeology and anthropology; museum ethics; Heritage of the Middle East and Africa; archaeology of Predynastic Egypt and Nubia;  burial rituals

Conservation as critical heritage practice; conservation of archaeological & anthropological objects and museum collections Conservation of built heritage and heritage places:  People Centred Conservation of Nature and Culture Transcultural Heritage Practice Decolonising methodologies

Critical, sociologically informed, and comparative approaches to the art of the ancient world. 

Theories and methods for the analysis of art of past societies 

Development of the concept of art as 'expressive symbolism' (derived from Talcott Parsons' Action Theory), through synthesis with structuralism, pragmatist semiotics (Peirce, Mead) and ethology, as well as Alfred Gell's account of the material agency of art. 

 Comparative approaches to the art of complex societies, whether through genres and institutions (such as visual depictions of history, or portraiture), stylistic systems ('naturalism', spatial representation, perspective), or ancient critical texts on art (art theory, art history writing).  Current research focuses on comparative approaches to ancient Greek and Roman and early imperial Chinese art.

Reception and display of ancient art, in museums and other institutions, in the modern world.

Comparative archaeology of the Middle East, North-East Africa, and Eastern Mediterranean; Early state formation; Cognitive and evolutionary approaches to culture; Prehistoric art and aesthetics; Intellectual and social history of archaeology and anthropology

Aegean archaeology; Method and theory; Landscape archaeology; Ethnoarchaeology; Complex societies; Settlement archaeology; Ceramics; Urbanisation

Geoarchaeology; Ecology of early agriculture; Long-term land use and landscape changes; Irrigation and Water management; diverse trajectories to social complexity; East, South and Southeast Asia.