People
Core Team
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Professor Neil Price is Director of the WIVA Centre. A specialist in the Viking Age and the pre-Christian religions of the North, he holds the Established Chair of Archaeology at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. At the same institution he has also been appointed Distinguished Professor by the Swedish Research Council, in conjunction with his direction of the ten-year research project ‘The Viking Phenomenon.’ Educated at the universities of London (UCL), York and Uppsala, he has previously held academic posts in Oslo, Stockholm and Aberdeen. Neil’s external commitments have included co-direction of the Harvard Summer School in Scandinavia, and visiting positions at universities in Johannesburg (Wits), Vancouver (SFU), and the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (UHI); he is currently Professor of Indigenous Studies and Global Archaeological Diversity within the GI-CoRE Global Station at Hokkaido University, Japan. He is a Fellow of ten learned societies in Sweden and the UK, including Sweden’s oldest, the Royal Society of Sciences, which in 2017 awarded him the Thuréus Prize for his contribution to Viking Studies; in 2023 he was awarded the Rudbeck Medal “for extraordinarily prominent achievements in science”. Neil’s researches have taken him to more than 50 countries, and his publications have appeared in 22 languages. His books include The Vikings in Brittany, The Viking Way, The Viking World (with Stefan Brink), The Vikings (with Ben Raffield), and Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings which was the Times and Sunday Times ‘History Book of the Year’ in 2020. He is a frequent contributor and presenter for television documentaries and film, and he was historical consultant for The Northman (dir. Robert Eggers, 2022).
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Docent John Ljungkvist is Co-Director of the WIVA Centre and Associate Professor at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. Specializing in trade and exchange patterns during and before the Viking Age, he is a part of the Viking Phenomenon project. John has a background in maritime archaeology and has for many years directed field and research projects, not least in Gamla Uppsala. His focus on the changing flows of imports and production started early in his career, and for several years he improved his skills by studying the material culture of contemporary Europe and beyond in relation to the burial and settlement data of Sweden and Scandinavia, while working for SHM and Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum (RGZM) in Mainz, Germany. Today, a significant part of his research interests lie in understanding the complexity of exchange and material culture during and before the Viking Age. This approach spans a range from local networks and resources to the global sphere, and is strongly interdisciplinary, from the identification of animal proteins to the alloys in metals. John has a long-standing interest in research-based 3D-reconstructions, which for example resulted in several innovation awards to his company Disir Productions. He has regularly participated as expert, reviewer or member of advisory board for national and international projects, exhibitions and UNESCO applications.
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Docent Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson is Co-Director of the WIVA Centre. With Viking Age society and its eastern contact network as a specialty, she is associate professor at the University of Uppsala in Sweden and part of the Viking Phenomenon’ project. Charlotte has a background in field archaeology and as a senior curator at the Swedish History Museum (SHM), and has held research scholarships at SHM, Stockholm University and the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum (RGZM) in Mainz, Germany. Educated at the Archaeological Research Laboratory at Stockholm University, her research has often adopted an interdisciplinary approach, combining archaeological material and methods with genetics and isotope studies. Key research interests cover martial society, mobility and cultural interactions, where empirically based methodological approaches to questions of social structure, identity, roles and gender also form important elements. In 2020 she was awarded Societas Archaeologica Upsaliensis scientific prize, acknowledging her evidence-based and interdisciplinary research and her “ability to bring scientific results to life without compromising reality”. Charlotte frequently participates in documentaries and other forms of public outreach, and as part of the advisory board in museum exhibitions, both nationally and internationally.
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Ms Rahaf (Ray) Abu Shaer is Coordinator of the WIVA Centre. She is an international coach in neurolinguistic programing and mental training, certified and registered at the International Coaching Community (ICC) and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC). Her role as the coordinator of our WIVA Centre involves managing the Centre’s website and economy, as well as taking care of the flow of information within the Centre and towards our extended networks.