Manuel Fernández-Götz - Biography#

I studied at the universities of Seville, Madrid, and Kiel, completing a binational PhD on the transformation of Iron Age societies in northeast Gaul. After finishing my doctorate, I coordinated the Heuneburg project at the State Office for Cultural Heritage Baden-Württemberg (2011-13).

I have worked at the University of Edinburgh since 2013, first as Chancellor's Fellow/Lecturer and then as Reader in European Archaeology. Between 2019 and 2022 I was Head of the Archaeology Department. In 2022 I was promoted to a Personal Chair and shortly afterwards appointed Abercromby Professor of Archaeology, an established chair first held by V. Gordon Childe.

My main areas of interest are Iron Age and Roman societies in Europe, the archaeology of identities, early urbanism, and conflict archaeology. I have authored over 230 publications, and directed fieldwork projects in Germany, Spain, the UK, and Croatia. In recognition of this research, I was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize (2016) and the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Thomas Reid Medal (2021). I have also held visiting scholar positions at Cambridge, Oxford, London, Brown, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Berlin, and taught as visiting staff at Beijing and Munich. I am currently PI of the Leverhulme Trust-funded project “Beyond Walls: Reassessing Iron Age and Roman Encounters in Northern Britain”.