Profile

Katharina Rebay-Salisbury is professor of Prehistory of Humanity at the University of Vienna and directs the research group ‘Prehistoric Identities’ at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Enthusiastic about the European Bronze and Iron Ages, her research focusses on combining interdisciplinary approaches for insights into people’s lives, identities and social relations in prehistory. Her current research explores themes such as sex and gender, motherhood, kinship, mobility and migration through ERC and FWF-funded projects analyzing burial contexts and human remains from Central Europe.

"It is important to me to make full use of the new possibilities of interdisciplinary bio-archaeology and to gain new insights into social relations of people in prehistory. In contemporary socio-political discussions on gender relations, family policy and migration, outdated visions of prehistoric and seemingly natural human conditions are often misused as political arguments, which can only be counteracted with correct data and exciting research." (Katharina Rebay-Salisbury)

Key Research Topics

• Prehistoric Archaeology
• Europe in the Bronze and Iron Ages
• Archaeology of the human body and social identities
• Gender archaeology, archaeology of motherhood, kinship analyses
• Interdisciplinary bioarchaeology (anthropology, DNA, proteomics, isotope analyses)

Projects

2024-01-01 to 2025-12-31, From Ashes to Insights: developing standardized protocols for the study of cremated human remains in archaeology (OeAD – Austrian Agency for International Cooperation in Education and Research mobility grant Nr. HR 04/2024, with Lukas Waltenberger, Petra Rajić Šikanjić, Daria Ložnjak Dizdar)

2023-10-01 to 2024-12-31, MEMORIES: Memory of Women. Recovering Singular Identities in Prehistory (Spanien 25-2-ID23)

2022-10-01 bis 2023-03-31, Geschlechtsspezifische Kindheiten in der Bronzezeit (FWF 1000 Ideen Projekt, TAI 759)

2022-10-01 to 2023-03-31, Sex-based differences in Bronze Age childcare (FWF 1000 Ideas Programme, TAI 759)

2021-01-01 to 2024-12-31, Unlocking the secrets of cremated human remains (FWF stand-alone project grant P 33533)

2020-01-01 to 2021-12-31, Together in life - together in death: adults and children in Bronze Age graves (OeAD – Austrian Agency for International Cooperation in Education and Research mobility grant Nr. CZ 09/2020, with Klára Šabatová)

2016-07-01 to 2021-06-30, The value of mothers to society: responses to motherhood and child rearing practices in prehistoric Europe (ERC Starting Grant 2015, 676828)

2015-01-01 to 2017-12-31, The social status of motherhood in Bronze Age Europe (FWF stand-alone project grant P 26820-G19)

2009-02-01 to 2014-07-31, Translating art and craft: Human representations, identities and social relations in the Late Bronze and Iron Age of Central Europe (Leverhulme, component project of Tracing Networks F/00 212/AA)

Academic Career

since May 2024: Corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

since March 2024: Deputy Head of the Institute of Prehistory and Historical Archaeology

since February 2023: Professor of the Prehistory of Humanity, Institute for Prehistory and Historical Archaeology, University of Vienna

since 2017: Head of the research group 'Prehistoric Identities' at the Austrian Archaeological Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

2017: Habilitation on 'Bodies, identities and social relations in Bronze and Iron Age Central Europe' (Venia legendi in Prehistory and Historical Archaeology), University of Vienna

since 2016: Member of the Young Academy of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

2015: European Research Council Starting Grant (The value of mothers to society: responses to motherhood and child rearing practices in prehistoric Europe, ERC Starting Grant 676828)

since 2015: Post-doc at the Austrian Archaeological Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences with own projects

2009-2014: Post-doc at the University of Leicester, UK, in the project 'Tracing Networks: Craft Traditions in the Ancient Mediterranean and Beyond'

2005-2008: Post-doc at the University of Cambridge, UK, in the project 'Changing Beliefs of the Human Body: a Comparative Social Perspective'

2004-2005: Research assistant (prae-doc) of the Prehistoric Commission of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

Academic Education

2001-2005 PhD, University of Vienna, Austria

1995-2001 MA, University of Vienna, Austria

_{Website content: K. Rebay-Salisbury, November 2023}