Forskningsområde

My research ranges topics from infancy, power and the powerless, to movement, dreams and the self in the past. It centres three main axes of late prehistori-early medieval Scandinavia (the Iron and Viking Ages): the entwinement between architecture and inhabitants; the complex relationships between the living and the dead; and politics of the body. I have worked with the links between architectural spaces and human bodies, by considering how prehistoric houses are built by bodies, produce certain bodily experiences, can be conceptualised as bodies themselves - and how dead bodies, parts and whole, are linked to domestic space. I have a strong interest in archaeological theory (e.g. post-anthropocentric, new materialist and multispecies approaches) and the lived experiences of inequality, structural vulnerability, and gender.

CV

Research Projects and Grants

I am currently PI of two concurrent research projects, working collaboratively with a large team of PhD students, postdoctoral researchers and collaborators.

• BODY-POLITICS: Personhood, Sexuality and Death in the Iron and Viking Ages (ERC Starting Grant, 2021-2026)
• ODDKIN: Making Oddkin in Later European Prehistory (Philip Leverhulme Prize-funded, 2023-2026)

I previously held a Norwegian Research Coucil/Marie Curie COFUND grant, Archaeology of Dwelling (2016-2020).

Teaching and supervision

I have taught broadly at undergraduate, masters' and PhD levels, periods ranging from the Neolithic to the high middle ages, including archaeological theory, methods, and research design. 

I am always keen to supervise driven and motivated PhD students. Please note that prospective PhDs will need to apply for independent funding and will need to immatriculate at a Danish university, e.g. Copenhagen or Aarhus. 

Current PhD students

2025-   Jutta Lamminaho, University of Nottingham (external supervisor). PhD project: Treating, Understanding and Categorising Bodies in Early Medieval Medical Texts                

2023-   Emma Thompson, University of Leicester (first supervisor). PhD project: Collision and Cohesion: (re)negotiations of mortuary identities in England and Denmark (c. 800-1100 CE)

2023-   Paul Duffy, University of Leicester (second supervisor). PhD project: From Stones to Structures – seeking the lost architecture of medieval Dublin

2022-   Brad Marshall, University of Leicester (first supervisor). PhD project: Gendered and social status disparities in the physical and cultural lifeways of children in Iron and Viking Age Scandinavia.

2022-   Renate Larssen, University of Leicester (first supervisor). PhD project: Living with humans: how animals shaped early medieval Northern Europe(400-1100 CE)

2022-   Elisabeth Aslesen, University of Leicester (first supervisor). PhD project: Bodied Objects: Personhood and imagery on clothed objects from Norway in the first millennium CE.

Completed PhD students

2017-2020         Claire Ratican, University of Cambridge (co-supervisor): PhD project: The Other Body: Persons in Viking Age Multiple Burials in Scandinavia and the Western Diaspora. Published as a monograph with Routledge.