Since his undergraduate days, Felix Riede has been engaged with humans’ relationship with the environment and with how prehistory is created in interaction with social and environmental forces. During his PhD project, he discovered a possible correlation between the Laacher See volcano outbreak around 13,000 years ago and the demographic and cultural changes that took place in the same period, especially in southern Scandinavia. The topic has absorbed him for a long time, led to several interdisciplinary innovations, and opened the door for entirely new research perspectives. The recently closed exhibition 'After the Apocalypse' at Moesgaard Museum was the culmination of the multi-annual research effort on the volcano outbreak at Laacher See, which has been funded by two Sapere Aude grants from the Independent Research Fund Denmark.

In the future, Felix Riede will continue to conduct research in humans’ relationship with nature and the changing climate and environment of the planet. With a substantial grant from the European Research Council, he will develop and employ new digital methods that will make it possible to bring together archaeological, ecological and climatic data. Concurrently with his archaeological basic research, Felix Riede is also deeply committed to applied sustainability research and teaching, reflected in his wide range of scientific publications, most recently: "More floods, fires and cyclones — plan for domino effects on sustainability goals" in the world-leading journal Nature.

"In connection with my professorship, I will conduct research in and teach our deepest prehistory and, specifically, the discipline called climate change archaeology. Thanks to the fantastic grant from the ERC and many fruitful cooperative relationships with colleagues at Archaeology, Biology, and Geology, we can now seriously advance our understanding of the role of the environment and climate in the development of the societies of the past, their adaptation, as well as their unsuccessful adaptation," says Felix Riede.

---

Further information

Felix Riede, professor
School of Culture and Society
Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies
Aarhus University
Mail: f.riede@cas.au.dk
Phone: +4560187382