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Introduction of Christian Svejgård Lunde Jørgensen

New PhD student at UrbNet.

My PhD project entitled Urban Life/Urban Disaster will evolve around the subject of archaeoseismology. This research field seeks to investigate earthquakes that can only be recorded through observations of damages on man-made structures or stratigraphies in archaeological contexts. The research field is aiming at contributing directly to the knowledge of past earthquakes as a subdivision within broader earthquake sciences. The research now involves specialists from different fields such as history, anthropology, seismology, geophysics and geology. Scholarly attention has been paid to public structures, however, the knowledge of how earthquakes affected private architecture is still evolving.

My project will focus on the archaeological site of Jerash in modern-day Jordan. A devastating earthquake struck the ancient city in 749 A.D., which left the city almost abandoned. Working at the Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet) gives me the opportunity to cooperate with The Danish-German Jerash North West Quarter Project that undertook excavations in Jerash, and my hope is to shed new insights onto how this devastating earthquake affected the city and the region as a whole.