Henny Piezonka on expedition in Mongolia. Photo: Sara Jagiolla.

The Kiel junior professor for anthropological archaeology, Dr. Henny Piezonka, has accepted an appointment to the W3 professorship for prehistoric archaeology at the Freie Universität Berlin. She will move to the German capital as early as 2023.

Henny Piezonka has been a junior professor at the Institute for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology at Kiel University since 2016. She is also PI in the Cluster of Excellence ROOTS, in the Collaborative Research Centre 1266 "Transformation Dimensions" and was a member of the Graduate School "Human Development in Landscapes", from which the Cluster of Excellence ROOTS emerged in 2019.

Her academic career began with studies in Prehistory and Protohistory, Classical Archaeology and Art History at the Humboldt University Berlin and the University of Glasgow. In 2010 she was awarded her doctorate at the Free University of Berlin with a thesis on "Die nordosteuropäische Waldzone im Neolithikum. Studies on the groups with early pottery north and east of the Baltic Sea". At this time, she worked as a research assistant at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn as part of the project "Geoarchaeology of the Steppe: On the Reconstruction of Cultural Landscapes in the Orkhon Valley, Central Mongolia", funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. This was followed by further posts at the University of Greifswald and the German Archaeological Institute before moving to Kiel in 2016.

Henny Piezonka's research focuses on the Neolithic and Early Metal Age in Central and Eastern Europe, hunter-gatherer-fishermen in high latitudes, pastoral nomads in arid and subarctic regions, mobility and sedentarism, conflict and inequality in prehistoric societies. She is involved in ethnoarchaeological studies, most recently in projects in Russia and Mongolia. She works closely with natural and life sciences and other related disciplines. Currently, she is part of an international team that is relaunching the tradition-rich "Ethnographisch-Archaeologische Zeitschrift" as platform for transdisciplinary research.

"Of course we regret that such a talented colleague is leaving us," says Professor Johannes Müller from the Institute of Prehistory and Early History and spokesperson for the Cluster of Excellence ROOTS and SFB1266, "at the same time we wish her all the best for her future career and look forward to many more joint projects."