I am a classical archaeologist specialising in Roman sculpture and currently a postdoctoral researcher within the Locally Crafted Empires (LoCiS) project, led by Rubina Raja and funded by the Carlsberg Foundation.
I studied Classics and Archaeology at the Università degli Studi di Milano (BA, 2013) and the Università di Pisa (MA, 2016), and received a PhD in cotutorship from the Università degli Studi di Milano and the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg in 2021.
My doctoral work focused on small-scale ideal sculpture in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, addressing questions of scale, typology, and the transmission of classical models in reduced formats. This work was subsequently developed in a monograph published in 2023 and in several scholarly contributions. Following my doctoral studies, I held postdoctoral positions at the Università degli Studi di Milano, working on the sculptural decoration of Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli, and later at the Scuola Archeologica Italiana in Athens (SAIA), addressing imperial portraiture in Attica during the post-Hadrianic age.
Within the LoCiS project, I investigate Roman portraiture from the southern Levant, broadly corresponding to the Roman provinces of Judaea/Syria Palaestina and Arabia.
I am an Associate Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology in the Department of History and Classical Studies at Aarhus University. My research interests lie broadly within the study of visual culture in the ancient world, the material culture of ancient pilgrimage, late antique art and archaeology as well as the contemporary "consumption" of heritage.
My first monograph, Making and Breaking the Gods. Christian Responses to Pagan Sculpture in Late Antiquity, was published in 2013. A second monograph, Classical Heritage and European Identities: The Imagined Geographies of Danish Classicism (co-authored with Lærke Maria Andersen Funder and Vinnie Nørskov), appeared in 2019. I have recently finished a monograph on the archaeology of ancient Mediterranean pilgrimage that takes inspiration from the so-called "New Mobilities Paradigm" and that should appear in 2026.
I am currently engaged with understanding the uses of visual media in scholarship on classical sculpture, including those afforded by the introduction of digital tools. On this issue, I work specifically with the publication of both old and new material from excavations at Kalydon in Greece (as part of Danish-Greek-Norwegian fieldwork) and Sagalassos in Türkiye (as part of the Sagalassos Archaeological Research Project).
Previously, I've been responsible for two large-scale collaborative research projects: "The Emergence of Sacred Travel (EST): Experience, Economy, and Connectivity in Ancient Mediterranean Pilgrimage", funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research's Sapere Aude research excellence programme (2013-2017), and the Horizon2020-funded "CoHERE: Performing and Representing European Identities" (2016-2019) in which I was Work Package Leader. I also serve as Editor-in-Chief of Brill's main series in classical archaeology, "Monumenta Graeca et Romana" (proposals for new volumes, especially monographs, are much welcome!).
I maintain an Academia.edu page here.
Rubina Raja is professor of classical archaeology and art at Aarhus University, Denmark and PI of the Semper Ardens Advanced Grant project Locally Crafted Empires. Between 2015 and 2025 she directed the Danish National Research Foundation’s centre of excellence Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet).
Raja’s research focusses on classical art and archaeology in its broadest sense with particular expertise in the visual cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean and its bordering regions, including iconography and portrait representations in the classical world and eastern Mediterranean, urban and landscape archaeology, sites and their societies’ multiple networks from the Hellenistic to the medieval periods. While being a classical archaeologist, Raja also works in fields intersecting traditional archaeology and natural sciences, bringing high-definition studies of the past to the forefront – an approach, which has most prominently been pioneered through the work done within the framework of the Centre for Urban Network Evolutions since 2015.
Raja is educated at University of Copenhagen (1995-1999) and studied a year abroad at La Sapienza in Rome (1997-1998) with a focus on Greek colonisation of Italy, Etruscan archaeology, Italic prehistory and Roman archaeology. She earned her graduate degrees at University of Oxford, UK (MSt 2000; DPhil 2005). She was a postdoc and teaching assistant at Hamburg Universität, Germany (2005-2007), and a post doc at Aarhus University (2007-2009) with a grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation for a project on religious identities in the Hellenistic and Roman Near East. In 2009 she became associate professor and in 2012 professor with special responsibilities (MSO). In 2015 Raja was elected by an international committee for the professorial chair in classical archaeology and art at Aarhus University.
Raja has received numerous national and international research awards and prizes, among these the Carlsberg Foundation's Research Prize (2024), the Friedrich Wilhelm von Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany (2022), Queen Margrethe IIs Rome Prize (2021), Dansk Magisterforenings Forskningspris (2019), the EliteForsk Research Prize (EliteForsk Prisen) from the Danish Ministry of Research and Education (2015) and the Silver Medal for outstanding research in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Sølvmedalje) from the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters (2014) as well as Tagea Brandts Award for female researchers (2014).
Rubina Raja is an elected member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters (2015) as well as the Academia Europaea (2022). She is an elected corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute (2022) and of the Archaeological Institute of America (2023).
Raja is the founder of numerous international book series, among those Mediterranean Studies in Antiquity and Urban Pasts (both published with Cambridge University Press) as well as Locally Crafted Empires, Studies in Classical Archaeology, Archive Archaeology, The Archaeology and History of Western Asia, Rome Studies, Studies in Palmyrene Archaeology and History, Women of the Past as well as the Scopus indexed Journal of Urban Archaeology, all published by Brepols Publisher.
Raja has extensive teaching, supervision, research and personel management experience, including HR management, staff development and budget planning. Her CV includes degrees and course certificates in research management, management and public governance, among these from INSEAD (Fontainebleau, France), Copenhagen Business School (Master in Public Governance, 2024) (Copenhagen, Denmark) and Via University College (Aarhus, Denmark) and the former Forvaltningshøjskole (Copenhagen, Denmark).
Raja has held fellowships at some of the most prestigious research institutions in the world, including The Max Weber Kolleg (Universität Erfurt, 2014/2015; 2024), The Getty Institute (villa scholar, 2018), Sorbonne University (2018), Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies (member, 2019) and All Souls College, Oxford (visiting fellow, 2023). In 2015 she was awarded the distinguished lecturership in the Human Sciences by the Max Planck Gesellschaft, Germany. In 2023 she gave the Rumble Fund Memorial Lecture at King’s College, London, and the Pritchett Lecture at University of California, Berkeley. In 2024 she gave the Thomas Spencer Jerome Lectures, which are amongst the most prestigious named lectures within classical studies worldwide. In 2026/27 she has been appointed a fellow at the Wissenschaftkolleg, Berlin (Institute for Advanced Studies), Germany.
Raja is actively engaged in discussions on research politics and the role of research, in particular the humanities as foundational and inherently important to modern societies as well as the promotion of a better gender balance, the furthering of equality in general and inclusion in academia.
Raja is an experienced fieldwork archaeologist and has co-directed fieldwork projects in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, most prominently the Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project with Achim Lichtenberger (2011-2021) and the Danish-Italian Caesar’s Forum Project (The Danish Institute in Rome and the Capitoline Soprintendenza, 2017-2023). She also co-directed the Khirbet al-Khalde Archaeological Project together with Craig Harvey (University of Alberta) and Emanuele Intagliata (Milan University) (2023-2025).
Raja's portfolio of research project directorships includes, apart from UrbNet the following collaborative research projects: The Danish Inter World War Archaeological Engagement in the Middle East: a digital platform project; Archive Archaeology; the Palmyra Portrait Project as well as Circular Economy and Urban Sustainability in Antiquity. The earlier Ceramics in Context project came to an end after four years of research and publications. She was an associated co-PI of the ERC Advanced Grant project headed by Jörg Rüpke ‘Lived Ancient Religion’ (2012–2017).
Raja headed the Danish National Research Foundation's Center of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions (2015-2025). Currently she directs a Semper Ardens Advance Grant for a long term major research project entitled Locally Crafted Empires. This project focuses on the rich portrait traditions of the Eastern Mediterranean (https://www.carlsbergfondet.dk/det-har-vi-stoettet/cf24-1040/).
Furthermore a collaborative research project on the historiography of urban archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Late Ottoman and Mandate periods funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation is ongoing (2025-2029) with among other partners colleagues at the Pergamonmuseum (SMB, Berlin) and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin).
Raja is open to supervising and co-supervising students at all levels within her fields of expertise.
Featured publications:
I'm a classical archaeologist with a PhD from Aarhus University (2020), an MA from the University of Cologne (2016), and a BA from the University of Groningen (2013).
I study portraits from the Roman period with a focus on materials and production. In addition to my research, I am committed to making classical archaeology accessible and engaging. I developed an archaeological outreach program for the Danish NGO Videnskabsklubben (running since 2024 in 14 schools across Denmark), completed a science communication course, and aim to further expand my outreach portfolio in the coming years.
