Vasiliki Kassianidou

Biography

Prof. Vasiliki Kassianidou has been teaching Environmental Archaeology and Archaeometry at the University of Cyprus (UCY) since 1994. In June 2015 she was appointed Director of the Archaeological Research Unit (ARU) by the Senate of the UCY. Prof. Kassianidou has been active in the administration of UCY serving as vice-chair of the Department of History and Archaeology, as a member of the UCY Senate and as a member of various committees. She is also a member of the Cyprus National Commission for UNESCO. From 2014 -2016 she served as the President of the Board of Trustees of the Cultural Foundation of the Bank of Cyprus. Prof. Vasiliki Kassianidou studied at Bryn Mawr College, USA where she did a double major in Chemistry and Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology. She received her Bachelor degree with a distinction (Cum Laude) in 1989. She continued her studies at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London where she received her doctoral degree on Archaeometallurgy in 1993. She worked as a post-doctoral research fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL, (1993) and in 1994 she joined the faculty of the Department of History and Archaeology of UCY. Her research is focused on ancient technology and specifically the production and trade of Cypriot copper through antiquity but also on the impact of this industry on the Cypriot landscape and environment. She has taken part and directed a number of field and analytical projects regarding her fields of expertise and has an extensive list of publications which include two edited volumes, three co-authored volumes and over fifty articles in peer reviewed journals, edited volumes and conference proceedings. Prof. Kassianidou has coordinated a number of research projects with funding from the Research Promotion Foundation or the European Union (in FP7 and H2020). The most important of these was the four year project entitled "New Archaeological Research Network for Integrating Approaches to Ancient Material Studies (NARNIA)" which she set up and coordinated. NARNIA was a Marie Curie Initial Training Network which fell under the People programme of FP7. It consisted of a consortium of nine partners from six different countries. With a budget of 4.6 million euros and 100% financing from the Research Executive Agency (REA) NARNIA was and perhaps still is the largest funded project ever to be granted by the REA to Cyprus and the largest project to receive funding from the European Commission in the fields of archaeology and archaeological sciences. She is currently the coordinator of another Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (656148 — PRENET — H2020-MSCA-IF-2014) with a budget of 151,000 euros and will be coordinating a new Marie Curie Individual Fellowship which will start in September 2017 (750904 — GLAZE — H2020-MSCA-IF-2016) with a budget of 151,648 euros.

Research Interest

Her research interests include: extractive metallurgy, ancient technology (stone, ceramic, glass, and metals), conservation of metals, production and trade of Cypriot copper in Antiquity, metals trade in the Mediterranean in Antiquity, the production and use of silver.