Meet Annelies Van de Ven, an archaeologist working in the Middle East!
Annelies is a postgraduate researcher looking into the archaeology of the Middle East, and its ramifications in the present. She recently submitted her Ph.D. thesis at the University of Melbourne in Australia, and is currently waiting (quite impatiently and nervously) for her examiner reports. Before this, she completed a Masters at the University of St Andrews in Scotland looking at the politics of archaeology in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Annelies thinks that the deep past and its material traces strongly influence how we identify ourselves in the present. These things impact how we engage with our environment and with one another. By better understanding what people did in the past, the complexity of their actions, and how this relates to the present, she believes we can improve our lives and interactions in the present.