Profile

Rubina Raja is professor of classical archaeology and art at Aarhus University, Denmark and director of the Danish National Research Foundation’s centre of excellence Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet).

Raja’s research focusses on classical art and archaeology in its broadest sense with particular expertise in the visual cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean and its bordering regions, including iconography and portrait representations in the classical world, urban and landscape archaeology, sites and their societies’ multiple networks from the Hellenistic to the medieval periods. While being a classical archaeologist, Raja also works in fields intersecting traditional archaeology and natural sciences, bringing high-definition studies of the past to the forefront – an approach, which has most prominently been pioneered through the work done within the framework of the Centre for Urban Network Evolutions since 2015.

Raja is educated at University of Copenhagen (1995-1999) and studied a year abroad at La Sapienza in Rome (1997-1998) with a focus on Greek colonisation of Italy, Etruscan archaeology, Italic prehistory and Roman archaeology. She earned her graduate degrees at University of Oxford, UK (MSt 2000; DPhil 2005). She was a postdoc and teaching assistant at Hamburg Universität, Germany (2005-2007), and a post doc at Aarhus University (2007-2009) with a grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation for a project on religious identities in the Hellenistic and Roman Near East. In 2009 she became associate professor and in 2012 professor with special responsibilities (MSO). In 2015 Raja was elected for the professorial chair in classical archaeology and art at Aarhus University.

Raja has received numerous national and international research awards and prizes, among these the Carlsberg Foundation's Research Prize (2024), the Friedrich Wilhelm von Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany (2022), Queen Margrethe IIs Rome Prize (2021), Dansk Magisterforenings Forskningspris (2019), the EliteForsk Research Prize (EliteForsk Prisen) from the Danish Ministry of Research and Education (2015) and the Silver Medal for outstanding research in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Sølvmedalje) from the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters (2014) as well as Tagea Brandts Award for female researchers (2014).

Rubina Raja is an elected member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters (2015) as well as the Academia Europaea (2022). She is an elected corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute (2022) and of the Archaeological Institute of America (2023).

Raja is the founder of numerous international book series, among those Mediterranean Studies in Antiquity and Urban Pasts (both published with Cambridge University Press) as well as Locally Crafted Empires, Studies in Classical Archaeology, Archive Archaeology, The Archaeology and History of Western Asia, Rome Studies, Studies in Palmyrene Archaeology and History, Women of the Past as well as the Scopus indexed Journal of Urban Archaeology, all published by Brepols Publisher.

Raja has extensive teaching, supervision, research and personel management experience, including HR management, staff development and budget planning. Her CV includes degrees and course certificates in research management, management and public governance, among these from INSEAD (Fontainebleau, France), Copenhagen Business School (Master in Public Governance, 2024) (Copenhagen, Denmark) and Via University College (Aarhus, Denmark) and the former Forvaltningshøjskole (Copenhagen, Denmark).

Raja has held fellowships at some of the most prestigious research institutions in the world, including The Max Weber Kolleg (Universität Erfurt, 2014/2015; 2024), The Getty Institute (villa scholar, 2018), Sorbonne University (2018), Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies (member, 2019) and All Souls College, Oxford (visiting fellow, 2023). In 2015 she was awarded the distinguished lecturership in the Human Sciences by the Max Planck Gesellschaft, Germany. In 2023 she gave the Rumble Fund Memorial Lecture at King’s College, London, and the Pritchett Lecture at University of California, Berkeley. In 2024 she gave the Thomas Spencer Jerome Lectures, which are amongst the most prestigious named lectures within classical studies worldwide. In 2026/27 she has been appointed a fellow at the Wissenschaftkolleg, Berlin (Institute for Advanced Studies), Germany.

Raja is actively engaged in discussions on research politics and the role of research, in particular the humanities as foundational and inherently important to modern societies as well as the promotion of a better gender balance, the furthering of equality in general and inclusion in academia.

Raja is an experienced fieldwork archaeologist and has co-directed fieldwork projects in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, most prominently the Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project with Achim Lichtenberger (2011-2021) and the Danish-Italian Caesar’s Forum Project  (The Danish Institute in Rome and the Capitoline Soprintendenza, 2017-2023). She also co-directed the Khirbet al-Khalde Archaeological Project together with Craig Harvey (University of Alberta) and Emanuele Intagliata (Milan University).

Raja's portfolio of research project directorships includes, apart from UrbNet the following collaborative research projects: The Danish Inter World War Archaeological Engagement in the Middle East: a digital platform project; Archive Archaeology; the Palmyra Portrait Project as well as Circular Economy and Urban Sustainability in Antiquity. The earlier Ceramics in Context project came to an end after four years of research and publications. She was an associated co-PI of the ERC Advanced Grant project headed by Jörg Rüpke ‘Lived Ancient Religion’ (2012–2017).

Raja currently heads the Danish National Research Foundation's Center of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions. In December 2024 she was awarded a Semper Ardens Advance Grant for a long term major research project entitled Locally Crafted Empires. This project focuses on the rich portrait traditions of the Eastern Mediterranean and begin in 2025 (https://www.carlsbergfondet.dk/det-har-vi-stoettet/cf24-1040/).

Furthermore a collaborative research project on the historiography of urban archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Late Ottoman and Mandate periods was recently funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation and will take place over the coming years with among other partners colleagues at the Pergamonmuseum (SMB, Berlin) and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin).

Raja is open to supervising and co-supervising students at all levels within her fields of expertise.

Featured publications:

• Archive Archaeology - https://www.brepols.net/series/ARC
• Contextualizing the Sacred: Sacred Space and its Material Culture in the Ancient Near East and Egypt - https://www.brepols.net/series/CS
• Jerash Papers - https://www.brepols.net/series/JP
• Journal of Urban Archaeology - https://www.brepols.net/series/JUA
• Mediterranean Studies in Antiquity - https://www.cambridge.org/core/series/mediterranean-studies-in-antiquity/4D76C9012EF13114FADD1B7DEB3F694C
• Pearl of the Desert - https://global.oup.com/academic/product/pearl-of-the-desert-9780190852221?q=Rubina%20raja&lang=en&cc=dk
• Rome Studies: Archaeology, History, and Literature - https://www.brepols.net/series/RS#publications
• Studies in Classical Archaeology - https://www.brepols.net/series/SCA
• Studies in Palmyrene Archaeology and History - https://www.brepols.net/series/SPAH
• The Oxford Handbook of Palmyra - https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-palmyra-9780190858117?cc=dk&lang=en&
• Urban Archaeological Pasts - https://www.cambridge.org/core/series/urban-archaeological-pasts/E48D0F05B4CE7BFF66AF94E418F54AEC
• Women of the Past: Testimonies from Archaeology and History - https://www.brepols.net/series/wop