Dr Jana Mokrisova

Jana is an archaeologist specialising in western Anatolia and the eastern Aegean from the Late Bronze Age to the Archaic period and theoretical approaches to ancient mobility. She holds a PhD in Classical Art and Archaeology (University of Michigan) and studied at Trent University (Ontario, Canada) for her BA. At Cambridge, she is Research Associate for ‘MIGMAG: Migration and the Making of the Ancient Greek World’ (ERC Consolidator Grant; Prof. Naoíse Mac Sweeney, University of Vienna). 

Her research investigates the connections between mobility, cultural exchange, and identity from methodological perspectives and applies it to western Anatolia and the Aegean in the late second and the first half of the first millennia BCE. Her PhD project brought forth a new theoretical and methodological understanding of ancient mobilities by re-examining whether the period after the collapse of Late Bronze Age polities witnessed an increase of unidirectional movement from Greece and the Aegean into western Anatolia. During her PhD, she was John L. Caskey Fellow (regular member) at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (2012-2013) and Junior Fellow at the Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, Istanbul (2015-2016).

Her new research develops particular aspects of ancient mobilities, such as the application of landscape approaches (as part of MIGMAG) and issues of technological emergence and transfer with a particular focus on the role of iron. She is a member of ‘Project Sideros: Early Iron Technology and Culture History in the Aegean during the Early Iron Age’ (Dr Marek Verčík, Charles University, Prague), which investigates metallurgical technologies and innovations of the late second and first half of the first millennium BCE in western Anatolia and the Aegean. She also contributes to ‘Being an Islander: Art and Identity of the Large Mediterranean Islands’ research and exhibition project at the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Jana has extensive field experience. While her primary research is in Turkey, she was a part of excavation and survey projects in Greece, Italy, the Republic of Georgia, Bulgaria, and the USA. Moreover, she worked as a research assistant on various projects of the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology (University of Michigan).

Before coming to Cambridge, Jana taught at Sheffield (2017) and was Lecturer in Ancient Greek History and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London (2018-2020). Her teaching focuses on cultural interaction and mobility in the ancient Mediterranean and incorporates methodological and theoretical perspectives from anthropology, archaeology, and history to studying the past.