Leicester academic recognised with esteemed prize for promising future
An outstanding academic at our University has received a prestigious £100,000 Prize for Archaeology – the second award in two years from the Leverhulme Trust for research at Leicester in the subject area.
Dr Oliver Harris, Associate Professor of Archaeology at Leicester, is being honoured with the Philip Leverhulme Prize. The Prize recognises the achievement of outstanding researchers whose work has already attracted international recognition and whose future career is exceptionally promising.
Dr Harris is co-director of the Ardnamurchan Transitions Project, a long running research project into changing lifeways on the Ardnamurchan peninsula, western Scotland. The project aims to understand how human occupation of one specific landscape changed at key moments of social transition, such as the start of farming, the beginning of metal work, the arrival of the Vikings, or the Highland Clearances.
Dr Harris, of the School of Archaeology and Ancient History, said: “I am absolutely delighted to receive this award from the Leverhulme Trust. The money will allow me to concentrate on my research, and in particular to start a new project examining how the work of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze can help us to develop new concepts with which to analyse archaeological problems. This builds on my current research on the nature of archaeological assemblages, and my long-term interests in the theory and philosophy of the discipline. The money will also be used to facilitate further examination and specialist study of materials recovered from my fieldwork in Ardnamurchan.”
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