Date: 6th of May 2026

Time: 10.15 – 12.00

Place: Uppsala Eng/2-2033 and on Zoom

Our speaker:

Dr. Viacheslav Kuleshov

Stockholm University, NFG (Numismatic Research Group)

Date: 28th of April 2026

Time: 10.15 – 12.00

Place: Uppsala Eng/2-2033 and on Zoom

Our speaker:

Omran Garazhian

Archaeologist, Prehistoric Field Archaeology and Anthropological Archaeology. Studying the connections of the Viking Age to Central Asia and southern Russia

Date: 23rd of April 2026

Time: 10.15 – 12.00

Place: Uppsala Eng/2-2033 and on Zoom

Our speaker:

Dr. Gianluca Raccagni

Senior Lecturer in Medieval History; Director of the History and Games Lab Research Centre, University of Edinburgh, and the PI of research project 'A Viking in the Sun: Harald Hardrada, the Mediterranean, and the Nordic World between the Late Viking Age and the Eve of the Crusades'.

Date: 13th of January 2026

Time: 10.00 – 12.00

Place: Uppsala Eng/2-2033 and on Zoom

Our speaker:

Dr. Monica White

Associate Professor of Russian and Slavonic Studies

Date: 2nd of December 2025

Time: 13.15 – 15.00

Place: Uppsala Eng/22-0031 and on Zoom

Our speaker:

Rodrigo Carreño Muñiz

PhD in Religious Studies, specialized in Viking and Greek Religion- University of Madrid.

Date: 24th of April 2025

Time: 10.15 – 12.00

Place: Uppsala Eng/22-0031 and on Zoom

Our speaker:

Patricia Rifa - Abou El Nil

Centre d’Études Alexandrines

Date: 23rd of April 2025

Time: 10.15 – 12.00

Place: Uppsala Eng/2-2033 and on Zoom

Our speakers:

Environmental archaeologists: Drs Véronique Forbes and Paul Ledger, the excavators of L’Anse aux Meadows.

Date: 8th of April 2025

Time: 13.15 – 15.00

Place: Uppsala Eng/16-0042

Our speaker:

James Webb:

South African artist whose work has been showcased in solo exhibitions at, amongst others, Liljevalchs Konsthall, Sweden, 2024; the Art Institute of Chicago, USA, 2018; Yorkshire Sculpture Park, United Kingdom, 2016. Major group exhibitions include the inaugural Islamic Arts Biennale (2023), 8th and 16th Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon (2007 & 2022), 13th Biennial of Dakar (2018), 13th Biennial of Sharjah (2017), 12th Bienal de la Habana (2015), and the 55th Biennale di Venezia (2013).

Date: 21st of March 2025

Time: 10.15 – 12.00

Place: Uppsala Eng/2-2033 and on Zoom

Our speaker:

Florent Audy:

Antiquarian at the Economy Museum and Royal Coin Cabinet

Date: 14th of March 2025

Time: 10.15 – 12.00

Place: Uppsala Eng/2-2033 and on Zoom

Our speaker:

Dr. Sunil Gupta:

Specialist on the Indian Ocean world of trade and maritime connections, with a long-term focus on cultural interactions

Date: 4th of February 2025

Time: 10.15 – 12.00

Place: Uppsala Eng/2-2033 and on Zoom

Our speaker:

Dr. Rocco Rante:

Archaeologist in the Department of Islamic Art at the Musée du Louvre.

He headed the Franco-Uzbek Archaeological Mission in the Bukhara Oasis and the Franco-Iranian Archaeological Mission in Khorasan.

Date: 21st of January 2025

Time: 10.00 – 12.00

Place: Uppsala Eng/2-K1023

Our speaker:

SAMUEL OTTEWILL-SOULSBYWIVA:

Visiting Researcher- Historian of late antiquity and the middle ages,with special interests in manuscripts, diplomacy,and urbanism- Oslo University

Date: 17th of December 2024

Time: 13.15 – 15.00

Place: Uppsala Eng/ 2-2033 and on zoom

Our speaker:

Dr. Gwendolyne Knight

Secretary, Societas Magica. Centre for Medieval Studies, Department of History, Stockholm University.

Date: 26th of November 2024

Time: 13.15 – 15.00

Place: Uppsala Eng/ 2-2033 and on zoom

We welcome two speakers for this seminar:

1. Dr. Marianne Hem Eriksen, Associate Professor of Archaeology at the School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester, and PI of the ERC Starting Grant Body-Politics.
2. Renate Larsson, PhD Researcher BODY-POLITICS | Future 100 funded, and Topic Coordinator for “Promoting the 3Fs (Freedom, Forage, and Friends) in Equine Welfare” in Frontiers of Veterinary Science. School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester. Renate’s presentation is titled: “Living with Humans: Exploring Animal Lives and Relationships in Viking Age Scandinavia Through the Lens of 'Archaeoethology'”

Date: 19th of November 2024

Time: 10.15 – 12.00

Place: Uppsala Eng/ 2-2033 and on zoom

Our speaker:

Dr. Alberto Robles Delgado
Universidad de Alicante, Spain
Bernadotte Scholarship at the Department of History, Stockholm University

Date: 02 November 2026

Place: Uppsala

Our Speakers:

• Matthew Farren, PhD Researcher. Institute for Northern Studies, University of the Highlands and Islands. Matthew is a body historian interested in how the body was understood in past societies. His doctoral research is exploring the ontology of embodiment in the Viking Age, using customary legal orders and insights from social bioarchaeology.

• Fraser Lucas Miller, a researcher affiliated with the Department of History at Stockholm University. His PhD dissertation, which was awarded the 2026 prize from the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy Fund for Swedish Folk Culture, explores how the legal protections afforded the home in the medieval Nordic laws developed over the course of the High Middle Ages.

• Jake Stattel, Research Fellow, University of Cambridge and WIVA Visiting Researcher.

Date: 10-11 September 2026

Place: Uppsala

Across the broad range of Arabic sources describing the Rūs, the Rūs are many things to many people. For
postmaster and spymaster Ibn Khurradādhbih, supplying an early textual description of the Rūs in his
ninth-century Kitāb al-Masālik wa-l-Mamālik, the Rūs are merchants. They trade furs, swords, and slaves
with various partners in Itil, Byzantium, Jurjan and even, on occasion, Baghdad. For Ibn Khurradādhbih the
Rūs are also impostors, lying about their Christian faith in order to secure specific taxation and trading
conditions.

Within a relatively short passage about the Rūs, Ibn Khurradādhbih’s intelligence packs a lot of punches
and supplies an impressive level of detail about an emerging mercantile entity originating far to the north
of his own sphere of operation. This workshop hones in on this short passage about the Rūs, in order to
explore just how much we might be able to unpick when we set Ibn Khurradādhbih’s observations in the
spotlight.

Engaging in a close collaborative reading of Ibn Khurradādhbih’s remarks on the Rūs and bringing together experts with various forms of interest in different aspects of this ninth-century intel, this workshop is
designed as an opportunity to pick apart the details in one of the earliest textual sources on the Rūs.

Date: 11 Juni 2026

Time: 09.00 – 12.00

Place: Uppsala Eng/ 2-0024 and on zoom

Discussion titles:

• Maritime Southeast Asia in the first Millennium CE: A review of its Shipwrecks, Ports and Products
• Ships Building Connections
• Before Trade: How Maritime Networks Emerge from Ecological Rhythms

Our speakers:

• Stephen A. Murphy: Pratapaditya Pal Senior Lecturer in Curating and Museology of Asian Art and Director of the Centre of South East Asian Studies, at SOAS, University of London.
• Verónica Walker Vadillo: Ramón y Cajal Research Fellow, University of Alcalá
• Abhirada Komoot: WIVA Visiting Researcher. A maritime archaeologist and cultural heritage specialist

Date: 19-30 January 2026

Place: India

Building on Dr. Sunil Gupta’s successful time as a visiting researcher, we travelled along the Coromandel Coast in southeastern India, visiting trading ports, production sites, and temples in the heartland of the Chola dynasty. This powerful maritime empire, partly contemporary with the Late Iron Age and Viking Age in northern Europe, was deeply engaged in Indo-Roman trade, with connections that endured long after the fall of the Roman Empire. Our site visits included historic trading posts such as Arikamedu and Korkai.

The journey along India’s coast continues west into Kerala, the historic heart of the spice trade. We visited more spectacular sites along the way. In Thiruvananthapuram, we held stimulating discussions with colleagues at the Department of Archaeology, University of Kerala. These meetings helped establish valuable contacts for future collaboration.

Date: 11-16 August 2025

Place: Singapore and Indonesia

Singapore:

• Asian Civilisations Museum, Belitung displays
• Belitung collections, Heritage Conservation Centre
• Jewel of Muscat ship hall, Marine Life Park

Jakarta:

• Belitung and Cerebon collections at Maritime Heritage galleries,
• Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries
• Early medieval collections at National Museum of Indonesia
• Intan collection at Museum of Fine Arts and Ceramics

Workshop Participants:

• Jiang Jiachen, SOAS
• Kevin Lam, ACM
• Michael Flecker, HSG
• Kan Shu Yi, NMS
• Gerald Sim, HPR
• Jian Cheng Michael Ng, ACM
• Kwa Chong Guan, NTU
• Tom Vosmer, N.A
• Emma Hayles, HCC
• Aaron Kao, HSG
• Stephen Murphy, SOAS

Date: 9th of September 2025

Time: 10:00 – 16.00

Place: Uppsala

Date: 25th of July 2025

Time: 10:00 – 16.00

Place: Uppsala

Special Guests:

• Johan Runer: Curator- Swedish National Maritime and Transport Museums.
  
• Fredrik Hallgren: Archeologist- Stiftelsen Kulturmiljövård
• Ingmar Jansson: Docent

Date: 21th of March 2025

Time: 9:00 – 17.00

Place: Uppsala

Special Guests:

PhD Ingmar Jansson, Docent

PhD Viacheslav Kuleshov, Stockholm University and Stockholm Numismatic Institute

PhD Nanouschka Myrberg Burström, associate professor/docent and reader at Stockholm University

PhD Sven Kalmring, associate professor/docent, and senior curator at the Swedish History Museum

PhD Fedir Androshchuk, docent/associate professor, Swedish History Museum and part of IAB for WIVA

Vikings across Eurasia: Early Indian Ocean networks in the growth of trans – continental ‘supply lines’ to Scandinavian lands (1st – 10th century CE)

Date: 14th of March 2025

Time: 9:00 – 16.00

Place: Uppsala

Abstract:

The key theme of the workshop ‘Vikings across Eurasia’ alludes to the spread of Scandinavian exchange networks across a vast area from western Europe to Central Asia between 800 – 1000 CE, driven by the desire of Viking communities to acquire exotic goods from far lands. Among the trade artefacts recovered from excavated Viking settlements such as those in southern Sweden, are materials sourced from the Indian Ocean world, a maritime area stretching from the Red Sea to the South China Sea, incorporating the Arabian, Persian, Indic and Southeast Asian littoral regions. The artefacts from Late Iron Age and Viking sites comprise thousands of cowrie shells, wound and drawn glass beads, stone beads of carnelian, garnet and rock crystal among other items. It is argued that the movement of these materials, mainly through intermediaries in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and Caspian Sea regions, involved long established Indian Ocean maritime networks. I will emphasize the point that the Indian Ocean connections with Scandinavian lands in the Viking Age need to be understood in deep time, in terms of the expansion of sea-land ‘supply lines’ through the first millennium CE into Eurasia. In this context, I propose to give an illustrated talk, with my point of departure being the Roman sea trade with India and Indian Ocean lands in the first century CE.

Date: 21st of January 2025

Time: 9:00 – 17.00

Place: Uppsala

Special guests

• Sam Ottewill-Soulsby: International visiting researcher at WIVA, historian of late antiquity and the middle ages, with special interests in manuscripts, diplomacy, and urbanism.
• Viacheslav Kuleshov: Senior researcher at Stockholm University, numismatist and archaeologist, with special interests in Oriental and Islamic numismatics.
• Ragnar Orten Lie: Archaeologist and project manager responsible for Viking veien Vestfold and Telemark, Scandinavia's leading expert on the relationship between birds of prey and humans in history.