Assoc ProfessorNeil Carlin

I am fascinated by how people negotiate, reproduce and communicate their social values and identities through their relationships with other people, places, animals, plants, things and various forms of beings. As an archaeologist, I am particularly interested in the material traces left by these interactions. Most of my research is focused on the fourth, third and second millennia BC in Ireland, Britain and their wider European contexts. I recently published a single-authored monograph on the start of the so-called Copper Age in Ireland (The Beaker Phenomenon? Understanding the character and context of social practices in Ireland 2500-2000 BC, 2018) with Sidestone Press.

In May 2018, I took up my current post as a lecturer in the UCD School of Archaeology. Originally I studied Philosophy and graduated with a B.A from University College Dublin in 2001, but subsequently obtained a M.A in Archaeology at Queens University Belfast in 2005. I have over 10 years’ experience in the archaeological services sector working on the excavation, post-excavation and publication of numerous sites in Ireland. I completed my PhD on the Beaker phenomenon in Ireland at UCD under the supervision of Prof. Joanna Brück in 2011. In 2014, I completed a two year IRC funded postdoctoral research project on the Irish Later Neolithic characterising social practices by studying the depositional treatment of Grooved Ware and associated objects in Ireland. I was a Teaching Fellow in the UCD School of Archaeology from 2015 to 2017, where I coordinated the Level 1 teaching programme.