Our Department brings together different disciplines and areas of expertise to study human societies, their cultures and their transformations through time and across space. Research and teaching are closely intertwined, bringing methods, sources and perspectives into dialogue.
How have people lived in different times and places? How have they built institutions, beliefs and forms of knowledge? How have societies changed through migration, exchange and conflict?
From prehistory to the present, our research ranges from local contexts to Europe and the Mediterranean, Africa, Asia and the Americas. Archaeology, history, anthropology, geography and the history of religions approach these questions from different perspectives.
The care and preservation of historical, archaeological, archival and ethnographic heritage are an integral part of our work. Museums, archives, libraries, archaeological sites and the places we study are settings for research and for collaboration with institutions and communities.
Questions raised by the present inform our research and teaching. We share knowledge and expertise with schools, cultural institutions, public bodies and communities, within and beyond the university.
Studying societies distant from us in time and space helps us understand how institutions, beliefs and ways of life familiar to us today took shape — and how different they might have been.
