Magda Midgley MA Hons, PhD, FSAScot
Senior Lecturer
Roles:
- Director of Studies,
- Honours courses Convenor
- Chair of the University Munro Committee
Room 2M.12, William Robertson Wing, Old Medical School, Teviot Place
Telephone: 0131 650 2504Office hours: On sabbatical leave during 2011/2012 academic session
Biography
Magda Midgley specialises in the prehistory of north-western Europe, with a particular emphasis on the region of the north European plain and southern Scandinavia. Her key research interests revolve around the transition from hunting-gathering to farming in northern Europe, the development of early farming communities (the TRB culture, see 1992 publication and current project) and the emergence of monumentality in funerary and ceremonial contexts during the Neolithic. The latter includes research on the European monumental long barrow cemeteries (2005) and megaliths of northern Europe (2008). Her interest in the megaliths also covers antiquarian researches at these sites and the use of megaliths as images in Romantic paintings. Her other interests include archaeological theory, and the history of archaeology as a discipline with particular emphasis on the Romantic period.
Magda has participated in fieldwork projects in Britain, France, Germany and the Czech Republic, among others at the seminal Linearbandkeramik site of Bylany, near Prague. She co-directed, with French colleagues, excavation of the monumental long-barrow cemetery at Escolives-Sainte-Camille in Burgundy. Her current field project, in collaboration with colleagues from the Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte, Christian-Albrechts-Universität, Kiel, Germany, involves investigation of megaliths and contemporary settlement patterns in the region of Altmark, Germany.
External appointments
- Consultant, Early Monumentality and Social Differentiation: The Altmark megaliths programme (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte, Christian-Albrechts-Universität, Kiel, Germany
- External Examiner, University of Lampeter, Wales