Maxence Ballif

Master's student

'Having a background in Sociology, I have always been interested in broad concepts and phenomena such as inequalities, the emergence of cities, or the complexification of social systems. When it came to choosing a specialisation, I went for Global Archaeology because it offered the most appropriate environment to study these topics in a more theoretical way.'

'Furthermore, I chose to focus on West Asia both because it constitutes a great framework to tackle the issues I was interested in, and because the long history of research in the region forces us to adopt a self-critical stance as researchers which I find positively challenging.'

'My favourite course was David Fontijn’s class on how deep History shaped modern societies. It pushed me to question a lot of preconceptions I had and to have better grasp on the role Archaeology can play in current societal debates. After my Master’s, ideally I wish to continue my journey within academia.'

Thalea Wolff

Master's student

During my studies I specialised on the ‘Goths’, and wrote my thesis on a practice approach on biritualistic cemeteries of the supposedly Gothic ‘Wielbark Culture’. One of my favourite courses in Global Archaeology focused on key developments in European Prehistory, and tackled a lot of the issues I focused on in my thesis. The concept of ‘archaeological cultures’ as well as ethnicity and identity within archaeology have always been a great interest of mine.

While I plan on resuming my research within this area in the future, I am currently gaining lots of field experience working for an commercial archaeological business here in the Netherlands. 

Marthe Donders

Alumna

I chose the master’s programme in Archaeology to get a more in-depth knowledge of Mediterranean archaeology. I felt like the Faculty of Archaeology in Leiden was the best place to do so because the discipline has its own faculty at Leiden University, giving a lot of options in regards to course variety, the possibilities to go abroad and to really explore all the different choices within archaeology.