Current research

Jennifer Swerida is Assistant Professor in the Archaeology of West Asia. Her research considers the impact of mobile peoples in the history and culture of the Ancient Near East. Her work targets groups that are underrepresented in modern scholarship, despite playing formative roles in shaping and connecting societies throughout the region. Jennifer is particularly interested in studying groups that occupied areas traditionally considered marginal or peripheral to state-level societies such as deserts, mountainous terrain, and marshes. Working within the landscape-household continuum of social archaeology, she studies how people in these areas developed cultural mechanisms and socioecological strategies that enabled them to thrive and interact as peers with neighboring states.

Jennifer is Director of the Bat Archaeological Project in Oman, where she draws on the Environmental Humanities to study the Early Bronze Age remains at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Bat. She considers how cultural behaviors in and intentional reshaping of the site's hyper-arid landscape enabled its inhabitants to build thriving, resilient societies. She also works closely with the Oman Ministry of Heritage and Tourism and Bat community stakeholders to manage the UNESCO site while developing educational infrastructure, supporting the local economy, and creating incentives for the practice of sustainable traditional lifeways.

In her second project, Jennifer is Assistant Director of the Naxcivan Archaeological Project in Azerbaijan. Here she investigates how mobile and semi-mobile societies of the Middle and Late Bronze Age used ritual engagement with the region's mountainous landscape to craft cultural rules and identities.

Jennifer is a devoted field archaeologist. In addition to her own projects, she has experience working at sites and landscapes in Oman, Azerbaijan, Iraqi Kurdistan, Syria, Ethiopia, the US, and the UK.

Teaching activities

Jennifer's teaching is grounded in experiential learning and connects with her research whenever possible. She teaches courses on Archaeology of the Near East and theory-driven themes such as Empire, Cultural Landscape, and Mobility. She particularly enjoys welcoming students on her field projects in Oman and Azerbaijan, where she teaches "archaeology in the wild." Jennifer is open to supervision and internships on subjects falling within her sphere of interests.

Curriculum vitae

Jennifer earned her BA in Archaeology and Art History at Boston University, followed by an MA in Near Eastern Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in Near Eastern Archaeology at the Johns Hopkins University. She held a postdoctoral at the University of Pennsylvania Museum and visiting assistant professorships at the American University of Beirut, Monmouth University, Kennesaw State University, and Bryn Mawr College. She won a major research grant from the US National Endowment for the Humanities, along with Co-PI Eli Dollarhide, for her research in cultural landscape and environmental humanities at the UNESCO  World Heritage Site of Bat, Oman. She was hired by Leiden University in 2024.

Office days

Tuesday-Friday