Rubina Raja | |
---|---|
Nationality | Danish |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Copenhagen Lincoln College. Oxford |
Thesis | Urban development and regional identity in the eastern Roman provinces, 50 BC - AD 250: Aphrodisias, Ephesos, Athens, Gerasa |
Doctoral advisor | R.R.R. Smith, Margareta Steinby |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Classical archaeology |
Institutions | Aarhus University |
Rubina Raja is a classical archaeologist educated at University of Copenhagen (Denmark),La Sapienza University (Rome) and University of Oxford (England). [1] She is professor (chair) of classical archaeology at Aarhus University [2] [3] and centre director of the Danish National Research Foundation's Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet). [4] [5] [6] She specialises in the cultural,social and religious archaeology and history of past societies. Research foci include urban development and network studies,architecture and urban planning,the materiality of religion as well as iconography from the Hellenistic to Early Medieval periods. [7] Her publications include articles,edited volumes and monographs on historiography,ancient portraiture and urban archaeology as well as themes in the intersecting fields between humanities and natural sciences. [8] Rubina Raja received her DPhil degree from the University of Oxford in 2005 (Lincoln College) with a thesis on urban development and regional identities in the eastern Roman provinces under the supervision of Professors R.R.R. Smith and Margareta Steinby. [9] Thereafter,she held a post-doctoral position at Hamburg University,Germany,before she in 2007 moved to a second post-doctoral position at Aarhus University,Denmark. [10] In 2011–2016,she was a member of the Young Academy of Denmark,where she was elected chairwoman in 2013. [11]
Rubina Raja has since 2007 been the principal investigator and director of several research projects,many of them interdisciplinary. [12] Since 2015,she directs Centre for Urban Network Evolutions based at Aarhus University, [13] which is the largest research initiative within the humanities in Denmark. The centre has pioneered work on urban development,high definition archaeology and network studies of societies from the late Hellenistic into the Medieval periods geographically covering regions from Northern Europe,across the Mediterranean to the East Coast of Africa. [14]
Rubina Raja directs two fieldwork projects together with international colleagues. Since 2011 she has directed the Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project together with professor Dr. Achim Lichtenberger from Münster University [15] and since 2017 she directs the Danish-Italian Caesar's Forum Project [16] in Rome together with Dr. Jan Kindberg Jacobsen (The Danish Institute in Rome) and Dr. Claudio Presecce Parisi (Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali,Direzione Musei archeologici e storico-artistici,Rome,Italy). [17]
Rubina Raja is the primary investigator and director of the Palmyra Portrait Project [18] that compiles a corpus of the funerary portraiture from Palmyra. Since 2012,the project has collected and catalogued more than 4000 pieces,which will be the basis for the research carried out within two new research projects,Archive Archaeology [19] and Circular Economy and Urban Sustainability in Antiquity. The Case of Palmyra. [20]
Rubina Raja is a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters [21] as well as the Academia Europaea. [22] She is an elected corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute and the Archaeological Institute of America. [23]
Rubina Raja's research has earned several national and international distinctions within and outside her field,among these the Friedrich Wilhelm von Bessel Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation in 2022 [24] and the Queen Margrethe IIs rome Prize in 2021. [25] She has also received the silver medal for outstanding research within the humanities from the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters [26] as well as the Elite Research Prize (EliteForsk) [27] and the National Research Prize for outstanding research within the humanities and social sciences awarded by Dansk Magisterforening. [28] She has also received international acclaims from the Max Planck Institute in Germany [29] and the American Institute for Archaeology. [30]
Rubina Raja engages actively in outreach initiatives and in communicating her research within the humanities and about the importance of humanities widely to the general public and policy makers in publications, [31] radio-interviews and programmes, [32] podcasts, [33] television [34] and documentaries, [35] as well as online lectures. [36] She has curated several exhibitions,among others Harald Ingholt og Palmyra [37] and Jerash –et dansk-tysk udgravningsprojekt at the Museum of Ancient Art (Aarhus University), [38] and The Road to Palmyra [39] at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. [40] Rubina Raja also acted as one of the head consultants on the featured exhibition Palmyra –Loss and Remembrance [41] at the Getty Villa (J. Paul Getty Museum). [42]
Rubina Raja studied Classical Archaeology,Italian language,Cultural Communication and Journalism at the University of Copenhagen in from 1995 to 1999. She spent the academic year 1997-1998 as an exchange student at the Universitádi Roma,La Sapienza. She continued her studies at the University of Oxford,where she gained her M.St. in Classical Archaeology. In 2005,she received her D.Phil. in Classical Archaeology from the University of Oxford (Lincoln College). Her dissertation was entitled Urban development and regional identity in the eastern Roman provinces,50 BC –AD 250:Aphrodisias,Ephesos,Athens,Gerasa and was supervised by R.R.R. Smith and Margareta Steinby. It was published as a monograph in 2012. As further education within the fields of research and management organisation Rubina Raja studied for a Diploma of Management (Forvaltningshøjskolen,Copenhagen;VIA University College,Aarhus (2008-2010) and joined an Executive Research Management Course (Copenhagen Business School,2015). She is committed to furthering professional leadership in the university world as well as dedicated to furthering the careers of female scholars and academics in particular. [43]
Full list of publications available at Aarhus University,Rubina Raja:Research Outputs.
Jacob Christian Jacobsen, mostly known as J. C. Jacobsen, was a Danish industrialist and philanthropist best known for founding the brewery Carlsberg.
Jerash is a city in northern Jordan. The city is the administrative center of the Jerash Governorate, and has a population of 50,745 as of 2015. It is located 48 kilometres (30 mi) north of the capital city Amman.
The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, commonly known simply as Glyptoteket, is an art museum in Copenhagen, Denmark. The collection represents the private art collection of Carl Jacobsen (1842–1914), the son of the founder of the Carlsberg Breweries.
Aarhus University is a public research university with its main campus located in Aarhus, Denmark. It is the second largest and second oldest university in Denmark. The university is part of the Coimbra Group, the Guild, and Utrecht Network of European universities and is a member of the European University Association.
Septimius Odaenathus was the founder king (malik) of the Palmyrene Kingdom who ruled from Palmyra, Syria. He elevated the status of his kingdom from a regional center subordinate to Rome into a formidable state in the Near East. Odaenathus was born into an aristocratic Palmyrene family that had received Roman citizenship in the 190s under the Severan dynasty. He was the son of Hairan, the descendant of Nasor. The circumstances surrounding his rise are ambiguous; he became the lord (ras) of the city, a position created for him, as early as the 240s and by 258, he was styled a consularis, indicating a high status in the Roman Empire.
The Temple of Artemis at Gerasa is a Roman peripteral temple in Jerash, Jordan. The temple was built in the middle of the highest of the two terraces of the sanctuary, in the core of the ancient city. The temple is one of the most remarkable monuments left in the ancient city of Gerasa (Jerash) and throughout the Roman East.
Aarhus University Press is a commercial foundation, founded in 1985 by Aarhus University, Denmark. The main purpose of the press is to publish the scholarly works of researchers at the university, but many authors come from other Danish institutions of higher education and from abroad. The press not only publishes scholarly works, but also disseminates works of intellectual merit and general interest to a broad reader audience. Common to all titles is their strong scholarly base, since all books are peer-reviewed.
The Villum Foundation ; formerly Villum Kann Rasmussen Foundation was set up in 1971 by civil engineer Villum Kann Rasmussen (1909–1993). 10 years later, he set up the Velux Foundation. Rasmussen was the founder of VELUX and Velfac, Danish window companies. Both foundations are part of VKR Holding A/S, owned by the Rasmussen family and the Villum Foundation, which is the main shareholder.
Trine Søndergaard, is a Danish photography-based visual artist. Trine Søndergaard lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Aarhus River is a 40-kilometre (25 mi) long river, in eastern Jutland, Denmark.
Kenneth Cortsen is a Danish sport management researcher from Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University and Associate Professor from University College of Northern Denmark (UCN), Department of Sport Management. His work places research at the heart of commercialization of sports.
Christian Lemmerz is a German-Danish sculptor and visual artist who attended the Accademia di Belle Arti in Carrara, Italy, from 1978 to 1982 and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts from 1983 to 1988. Despite classical sculpture training in Carrara, Lemmerz drew his main inspiration from the post-war process-oriented pop art, not least from his fellow countryman, Joseph Beuys.
Palmyra is an ancient city in the eastern part of the Levant, now in the center of modern Syria. Archaeological finds date back to the Neolithic period, and documents first mention the city in the early second millennium BC. Palmyra changed hands on a number of occasions between different empires before becoming a subject of the Roman Empire in the first century AD.
Sophia Kalkau is a Danish artist, who works in a variety of media including writing, photography, sculpture and installation. Sophia Kalkau has studied Art History at Copenhagen University and holds a degree in Art Theory from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. She is the author of numerous publications on aesthetics.
Palmyrene funerary reliefs are almost 4,000 busts on decorative slabs closing burial niches inside underground tombs, produced in Palmyra over three centuries from the middle of the first century BC. It is the largest corpus of portrait sculpture in the Roman world outside Rome and the largest collection of funerary representations from one place in the classical world.
Marie Louise Stig Sørensen is a Danish archaeologist and academic. She is Professor of European Prehistory and Heritage Studies at the University of Cambridge and Professor of Bronze Age Archaeology at the University of Leiden. Her research focuses on Bronze Age Europe, heritage, and archaeological theory.
The Temple of the Gadde is a temple in the modern-day Syrian city of Dura-Europos, located near the agora. It contained reliefs dedicated to the tutelary deities of Dura-Europos and the nearby city of Palmyra, after whom the temple was named by its excavators. The temple was excavated between 1934 and January 1936 by the French/American expedition of Yale University, led by Michael Rostovtzeff.
Odaenathus, the king of Palmyra from 260 to 267 CE, has been identified by modern scholars as the subject of sculptures, seal impressions, and mosaic pieces. His city was part of the Roman Empire, and he came to dominate the Roman East when in 260 he defeated Shapur I, the Sasanian emperor of Persia, who had invaded the Roman Empire. Odaenathus besieged the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon in 263, and although the city did not fall, the campaign led to a full restoration of Roman provinces taken by Shapur I. In the aftermath of his Persian war, Odaenathus assumed the title King of Kings, which was a challenge to the Persian monarch's claims of authority in the region. Odaenathus ruled the Roman East unopposed with imperial consent. In 267, he was assassinated alongside his eldest son Herodianus while conducting a campaign against Germanic raiders in Bithynia; he was succeeded by his son Vaballathus under the regency of the widow queen Zenobia.
Christine Buhl Andersen is a Danish art historian and museum director. After holding a number of high-ranking positions in Danish museums and museum associations, in March 2017 she was appointed director of the New Carlsberg Glyptotek, a museum which builds on the collection of the successful brewer and classical art enthusiast Carl Jacobsen (1842–1914). In August 2019, the New Carlsberg Foundation announced that she was to be appointed its new chair.
Jeffrey Scott Hangst is an experimental particle physicist at Aarhus University, Denmark, and founder and spokesperson of the ALPHA collaboration at the Antiproton Decelerator (AD) at CERN, Geneva. He was also one of the founding members and the Physics Coordinator of the ATHENA collaboration at the AD facility.