Prize recipient 2024 | Rubina Raja

What is your research about?

I trained as a classical archaeologist and conduct research into ancient cultures and how they have been (re)discovered, portrayed and actively used in more recent times. Since 2015, I have headed the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre for Urban Network Evolutions, where we study cities and their networks in a longue durée perspective from Northern Europe to the east coast of Africa.

My expertise in the context of the centre is in the urban cultures of the Mediterranean and neighbouring regions – a topic that caught my interest while I was writing my doctoral thesis at University of Oxford. Overall, I span broadly in my research and have four main focus areas: self-representation, especially iconography; cities and their networks from antiquity through to the early Islamic period and early Middle Ages; the historiography of archaeology, including archive studies; and active field archaeology. These research strands are closely interwoven, and people and their relations with other people and the world around them are at the heart of all my research.

Classical archaeology is not a narrow, rigidly defined discipline, but home to a broad spectrum of possibilities and new approaches. It is a humanities discipline which is both classical and takes the shape of basic research, but also a humanities discipline, which is innovative and challenging.

What are the challenges and prospects for your research?

There are always plenty of challenges – that’s what makes it interesting! One key issue is naturally the growing pressure on Danish universities. In terms of research, one of the greatest challenges in archaeology is being able to make sense of the high level of detail in our rapidly growing data sets while also being able to compare and contextualise them meaningfully.

In this area, we are increasingly needing not only to make the most of what digitisation and artificial intelligence have to offer, but also to fill the openings they bring with solid and well tested content. The prospects for my research are truly breathtaking. One example is the work on iconography I have been taking the lead on with one of my research teams and colleagues over the past decade.

The results of the project will usher in a new paradigm for how we understand Roman period portraiture. Ultimately, it is a matter of rewriting a part of world history, however small a part it might seem from the outside. There are other projects of such nature that I could see myself realising. The results could change the way we carry out classical archaeology and how we apply the implications more broadly.

How did you become interested in your research field?

My interest in classical archaeology was born out of curiosity about cultural understanding and meetings between cultures, in particular the grey zones between what we often classify as separate cultures. It was not something I would necessarily have anticipated making my life’s work.

I went down the natural science route at high school, and it was only after graduating – and during the time I thereafter took to think about what I wanted to study – that I stumbled over classical archaeology. This took me on a journey which included studies outside Denmark, including in Rome and Hamburg, at Oxford and later out in the field in a number of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries.

I am a big fan of the Humboldtian world-view on education with its broad approach to learning and knowledge. Classical archaeology is a good example: you need to have a good grasp of numerous languages, both ancient and modern, and you also need a deep cultural understanding which extends beyond just ancient Greek and Roman cultures.

What are the greatest insights or discoveries you have made?

Much of my research is done in collaboration with colleagues and employees in my various research projects. It is such collaborations that has enabled the greatest insights and discoveries, because I have been able to scale projects on the basis of the questions, I sought answers to.

This also means that many of the most important results have quite naturally been published jointly with colleagues and talented junior researchers. This is not always something that is associated with classical humanities, but what we have shown is that you cannot conduct pioneering research that changes our view of even minor aspects of world history without collaboration – often long-term collaborations that require considerable time and resources. One example is the research I have been doing in my projects focusing on the oasis city of Palmyra in Syria.

We have been able to demonstrate that the archaeological evidence provides insights into transformative events in world history, such as sudden economic decline and social resilience in times of crisis, about which historical sources have told us nothing. These results will require much greater integration of source groups in the future than has previously been the norm in classical research.

What does it mean to you to win the Carlsberg Foundation Research Prize?

It is an incredible honour for me to receive the Carlsberg Foundation Research Prize. I do not think I would have been awarded this prize without the opportunities offered by the Danish philanthropic foundation model to conduct both solo and collaborative research at a high level for many years. So, in many ways receiving the prize is also a tribute to my collaborators and employees and to the foundations that have supported my research ideas and my organisation for providing a place for robust research that breaks new ground in the humanities.

The prize is a solid confirmation that the humanities in every form, including the classical, deserve attention and have crucial contributions to our world today. It is often difficult to attract attention to the humanities, and humanities scholars need to balance both classical methodologies and embrace innovations to develop new lines of enquiry and communicate them. So, it is fantastic to have been awarded the Carlsberg Foundation Research Prize and to take on the responsibility it brings to serve as an ambassador for the humanities.