International Advisory board

Dr. Fedir Androshchuk

Studied the history and archaeology of Ukraine at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and earned his PhD in 1998. His thesis focused on the cultural and economic interactions between the Slavs and the Northmen in the area between the Dnieper and Desna Rivers in Ukraine. This led him to study military aspects of Viking Age society, as well as Scandinavian contacts with the East and Byzantium. After teaching at the University, he moved to Sweden. Since 2000, he has been affiliated with the Departments of Archaeology at Stockholm and Uppsala Universities as well as the Swedish History Museum. He has authored several books including “Vikings in the East” (Uppsala, 2013), “Viking Swords” (Stockholm, 2014), and "Images of Power: Byzantium and Nordic Coinage" (Paris-Kyiv, 2016). In 2020, he signed a contract with the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine to lead the National Museum of the History of Ukraine and has been researching cultural heritage in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Since 2023, he has led the research project “Sweden and Ukraine in the History of Museum Collections and Exhibition Narratives" at the Swedish History Museum. In 2022, he was elected a member of the Executive Board of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA).

Dr. Irene García Losquiño

Is Distinguished Research Fellow at the University of Santiago de Compostela. She investigates viking presence in areas of the diaspora with low levels of Norse settlement, particularly medieval Iberia. Irene received her PhD on runology from the University of Aberdeen in 2013 and, since then, she has worked in institutions in Sweden, Scotland, and Spain, including a postdoctoral Bernadotte Fellowship at the Onomastics Department at the University of Uppsala.

Dr. Thorir Jonsson Hraundal

is a Lecturer in Medieval Studies and Middle Eastern Studies, and the director of the Middle Eastern Studies program at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik. He graduated with a BA in General Linguistics from the same university in 1995, and later studied Arabic and Hebrew at the University of Salamanca in Spain, before earning an M.Litt. from the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Cambridge in 2005. His research there focused on the northward expansion of Islam, particularly the conversion of the Volga Bulgars. Thorir defended his PhD dissertation on Eastern Vikings in Arabic sources at the University of Bergen in 2013.

Professor Ingela Nilsson

Ingela Nilsson is Professor of Greek and Byzantine Studies at Uppsala University. Her research interests concern questions of storytelling, translation and adaptation, including cultural transfer. As director of the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (2019-21) and within the frame of the research programme Retracing Connections (2020-27, https://retracingconnections.org/), Nilsson was co-curator of the online exhibition Nordic Tales, Byzantine Paths (https://nordictalesbyzantinepaths.ku.edu.tr/).

Professor Marianne Vedeler

holds a position as Professor of Archaeology at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. Her primary area of research is the Viking Age and late medieval periods in Scandinavia. She is particularly interested in dress and accessories, textile trade and distribution and food culture. Marianne has over 30 years of experience in museum collection management.

Professor Anna Wessman

Is Professor in Iron Age Archaeology at the University Museum of Bergen (UiB), Norway, with scientific responsibility for the Viking Age collections. She is an expert in ancient mortuary practices and the study of death in Finland and Scandinavia. Her other research interests deal with non-professional engagements with archaeological heritage, particularly hobby metal-detectorists, archaeological finder-collectors and other Heritage Practice Communities. Anna is an elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (FSA) and one of the founding members of the European Public Finds Recording Network (EPFRN).

Professor Henrik Williams

is Professor of Runology at Uppsala University since 2021 and before that holder of the chair in Scandinavian Languages since 2002. Williams’ main areas of reserach are runic inscriptions, Old Norse personal names and philology.

A full CV can be found here

Professor Susan Whitfield

Is currently Professor of Silk Road Studies at the University of East Anglia where she is working on the Nara to Norwich Project with Professor Simon Kaner. She was previously curator of manuscripts from Central Asia at the British Library and founding Director of IDP, an international initiative to digitally reunite manuscripts and artefacts from the eastern Silk Roads (idp.bl.uk). She has published numerous books and articles, curated several exhibitions on Silk Road themes, and travelled extensively to Silk Road sites.