Roots and Routes: A View of Community-Led Archaeology from the Mediterranean

UCL Institute of Archaeology Thematic Research Seminars Programme | Term II, 2025-26

The Term II seminar series will highlight thematic research looking at 'Computational and Digital Frontiers' and 'Community-Led Pasts and Futures'. These are scheduled to be in-person events.

Seminars on 'Computational and Digital Frontiers' will explore research related to applications of data science; advanced landscape GIS; modern spatial and multivariate statistic; remote-sensing and geophysical prospection; agent-based modelling; human use of space as well as data infrastructure.

Those seminars on 'Community-Led Pasts and Futures' will highlight research related to theory and practice of community and development archaeology; heritage and wellbeing; archives and ethics; cultural heritage of diaspora communities; memorialising ancient landscapes; issues of science capital and identity with under-represented audiences; community-collaborative research exploring museums, decolonisation, and social justice as well as co-production of research with diverse stakeholders and publics.

About the speaker

Francesco is Assistant Professor in Heritage and History at the University of Birmingham, and was previously Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow (MSCA) at Trinity College Dublin, researching archaeology, heritage and wellbeing (2022-2024), and a postdoctoral researcher in digital heritage at the Cyprus University of Technology (2020-2021). He uses fieldwork activities to experiment with new approaches and practices of communication, engagement and evaluation. 

As part 'Linking Community Archaeology and Wellbeing in the Mediterranean' (LOGGIA), he worked with the Mental Health Unit of Piombino (Italy), the Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics (Cyprus) and the European Huntington's Association to design and implement interpretation activities based on historical landscapes and digital environments (Minecraft Education), and to evaluate the impact of these activities on wellbeing. In 2015, together with four colleagues, he launched a blog in Italian called Archeokids. Since then, Archeokids has collaborated with major Italian heritage sites such as the Archaeological Park of the Colosseum, and in 2022 published the book "Scava con Archeokids: il manuale del giovane archeologo" (Dig with Archeokids: The Young Archaeologist's Handbook), which has been translated into Chinese, Turkish, Spanish and Polish.

[Image credit: Uomini e Cose a Vignale photo archive]

Wednesdays, 4pm

• 21 January: CAAL Project team - Central Asian Archaeological Urbanscapes: digital documentation, interpretation and monitoring
• 28 January: Pontus Skoglund (The Crick Institute) - Myth, materiality, and migration? - insights into the genetic histories of Britain, Scandinavia, and Egypt from ancient DNA
• 4 February: Xana Barroso (University of Southampton) - Measuring minds: exploring behaviour and information transmission in Middle Palaeolithic handaxes through Geometric Morphometrics
• 11 February: Francesco Carrer (Newcastle University) - Ethnoarchaeology and computer modelling to investigate long-term landscape dynamics

[18 February: Reading Week - no seminar]

• 25 February: Sarah Wolferstan (UCL ASE) - What tools are we using? ASE's approach to engagement and our Whitechapel project
• 4 March: Francesco Ripanti (University of Birmingham) - Roots and Routes: A View of Community-Led Archaeology from the Mediterranean
• 11 March: Harald Fredheim (University of York) - Foregrounding lived experience and relationships in museums for participatory heritage-making
• 18 March: Paola Giuseppantonio Di Franco (University of Essex) - Reimagining Place After Disaster: Community Voices, Immersive Technologies, and the Reconstruction of Belonging

All members of the UCL community are welcome to attend.