Planned activities

Current planned activities

Student day workshop

Health and Safety in Fieldwork for Early Career Researchers. Led by Kurt Teifling, MD and Seth Hawk, MD. Kurt Teifling and Seth Hawk are both emergency medicine physicians who specialize in Wilderness & Environmental Medicine. In 2021, Kurt Teifling co-edited the special issue of Advances in Archaeological Practice entitled “Health and Wellness in Archaeology: Improving readiness and response,” of which Seth Hawk also contributed.

Keynote Speakers

four 1-hour lectures in the afternoon on each day of the conference

  • Intisar Soghayroun El-Zein is pioneering female archaeologist from Sudan where she was also Minister of Higher Education in the Sudanese Transitional Government.
  • Sada Mire is a Swedish-Somali archaeologist and frequently lectures on how heritage and archaeology can contribute towards global challenges including sustainability, human diversity, and peace.
  • Alma Nankela is a pioneering female southern African archaeologist. She was the Chairperson of Namibian National Committee for Human Remains and Heritage Objects (HRC) in the Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture Namibia. She was also the only state archaeologist in Namibia until 2021.
  • Krish Seeta is a professor at Stanford University and studies colonialism and diaspora on African islands with a focus on zooarchaeology. His work in Mauritius explores aspects of slavery and Diaspora.

Plenary Discussion

Scheduled for the last day of the conference. It will bring together the four keynote speakers plus additional guests to share their insights on leveraging archaeological research to confront contemporary global challenges. The Plenary discussion will also include an audience-driven Q&A session.

  • Kristina Douglass is an Assoc. Professor at Columbia University whose research focuses on the inter-relationships of people, land-, and seascapes in Madagascar. Her research often leads public debates, planning, and policymaking on issues including climate change and conservation. She also has extensive experience collaborating with local, indigenous, and descendent populations in archaeological science.
  • Zeray Alemseged is the Donald N. Pritzker Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on the evolutionary history of cercopithecidae as well as the origin and diversification of early hominins in the Mio-Pliocene and their paleoenvironmental context.
  • Shadreck Chirikure is the Edward Hall Professor of Archaeological Science, Director of RLAHA, and British Academy Global Professor at Oxford University. He is an archaeometallurgy specialist whose work in southern Africa is used as a lens to view challenges in contemporary societies.

Oral Research Symposia

Will be held during the mornings and afternoons of the three days of the conference.

Student day workshop

Will be held during the mornings and afternoons of the three days of the conference.

Poster Presentations

Post-Conference Excursions: TBA

The Algarve includes a rich and well-preserved history that includes well-preserved Paleolithic, Neolithic, Phoenician, Roman, Moorish, and Medieval sites. The Moorish history has ties to North African communities and was once known as Gharb Al-Andalus.

Live Streaming

To ensure the widest possible attendance, especially for researchers in Africa who cannot attend the conference in person, all keynote talks, oral presentations, and the plenary discussion will be live-streamed. The live video feed will be hosted on the conference website. In collaboration with institutions across Africa, these streams will also be featured as local events.