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Visiting PhD student Alix Thoeming

15 June-16 July 2017.

I'm a PhD student from the University of Sydney visiting Urbnet on the AUFF visiting PhD student grant, and I'm very happy to be here! I am visiting for one month over June and July, and while it's very quiet with most of the staff away on excavations, I'm enjoying the Danish summer. My PhD project is concerned with building a theoretical model of the early medieval settlements of the Baltic, so towns like Hedeby, Ribe, Birka, but also settlements in the east and south, such as Grobina and Wolin. One of the important pieces of information I need in order to build my model relates to the outcome of these settlements, and of course for Ribe that is quite uncertain. While I'm here I will be looking at the literature and the artefacts relating to the uncertain 10th century in Ribe, in order to get a better idea of whether the town declined or was completely abandoned. So a small task! A summer excavation is currently being conducted at the site so I'm really looking forward to visiting over the coming weeks. Once my project concludes I'll provide an update on my findings. Thank you very much to Urbnet and Aarhus Universitet for the opportunity to visit.