Skip to main content
Overview

Michal Michalski

Research Assistant


Affiliations
Affiliation
Research Assistant in the Department of Archaeology

Biography

I am an Archaeologist and a Geographer.I worked as a field archaeologist for commercial and research projects in Poland, UK, UAE and Qatar before pursuing career as GIS professional in heritage management and government. I was involved in maintenance and publication of national heritage assets as well as producing maps for UNESCO nomination documents and management plans.

My interests include archaeology of imperial landscapes, urban archaeology, cultural heritage data management: database development, standards and ontologies, as well as application of GIS and remote sensing in archaeology. I am particularly interested in open and reproducible computational research methods.

Teaching

I have joined Data Carpentry community as instructor to teach Data Literacy and Reproducibility.

Academic Background
  • MSc in Geographic Information Science, The University of Edinburgh, UK
  • MA in Archaeology, The University of Nicolai Copernicus, Poland
  • Diploma in Arabic Culture and Language The University of Nicolai Copernicus, Poland
Research Topic

The Great Dispersal - spatio-temporal settlement patterns in the Northern Fertile Crescent under territorial empires of first millenium BC and AD.

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to investigate and establish the timing and character of the landscape of dispersal, a structural change in settlements pattern in the Northern Fertile Crescent from the end of 2nd millennia BC to 7th century AD, a period that corresponds to the later territorial empires in the Near East. Although the nature of this phenomenon has been debated and attributed to various factors, the analysis had a local and limited scope. To address this shortcoming, my goal is to investigate the change spatially and diachronically by analysing the demographic, settlement, and land-use patterns at a regional level and to contextualise this within our present understanding of empires.

Scholarships and Grants
  • 2019 Irene Calvert Travel Bursary
  • 2020 BANEA Conference Grant
  • 2020 H.R. Haycock Studentship in the Archaeology of Egypt and the Ancient Near East, Department of Archaeology, Durham University, UK.
Papers Presented

Morgan, C., Carter, R. & Michalski, M. (2016) The Origins of Doha Project: Online Digital Heritage Remediation and Public Outreach in a Vanishing Pearling Town in the Arabian Gulf. in CHNT 20: Conference on Cultural Heritage and New Technologies November 2-4, 2015. Stadt Archaeologie Wien.

Michalski, M., Carter, R., Eddisford, D., Fletcher, R. and Morgan, C. (2018) Doha Online Historical Atlas - GIS interactive mapping of space and time in a pearling town. Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, 29 March – 2 April 2016, Oslo.

Posters Presented

Michalski, M. (2020) Reproducible Rchaeological Survey, British Association of Near Eastern Archaeolgy (BANEA) – 2 nd prize winner for the best poster.

Public Outreach

Michalski, M, Traditional Architecture of Doha. Heritage of Doha, Identity of Qatar Workshop, 5 November 2014.

Gittings, B., Michalski, M. The Story of Perth: Linking Archaeology, History and Maps. Working Digitally with Historical Maps, 13 December 2012, Edinburgh.

Research interests

  • archaeological spatial analysis and remote sensing
  • computational archaeology
  • heritage data management
  • landscape archaeology
  • urban archaeology