The Carlsberg Foundation is awarding a total of more than 24 million DKK to 22 new initiatives that support researchers in communicating their work to non-academic audiences. One of these initiatives is the podcast series ‘Urban Opinion', which will explore aspects of urban life in the past from a global perspective, with a particular focus on themes that resonate with today’s public, such as sustainability and circular economies, reuse and recycling, conflict, crisis, and climate change.

The series’ 20 episodes, each 12 minutes long, will explore urbanism from the earliest cities to the present, drawing on archaeological examples from around the world. The podcast will give listeners insight into cities as a phenomenon – how they emerge and how they drive economic growth and technological development – while also highlighting the challenges that urbanization and city life can bring. Based on UrbNet’s research, the series will present archaeological evidence of past urban life and show how archaeologists can map how earlier societies adapted to crises such as climate change and political instability, providing a window into how life unfolded under very different historical conditions.

The podcast is based on a series of feature articles by Centre Director Rubina Raja and former Deputy Director Søren Sindbæk, which have been published every other month since 2022 in the internationally renowned popular science magazine Current World Archaeology. The podcast will be released in both Danish and English.

See more about the Carlsberg Foundation’s Mindelegat here