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Professor and centre director Rubina Raja receives DM’s Research Award 2019

DM (Danish Association of Masters and PhDs) has awarded Rubina Raja the Research Award 2019 within the humanities and social sciences. Rubina Raja receives the award for her excellent research, for paving the way for new, interdisciplinary research efforts and for innovative use of research results.

Photo: Lars Svankjær.

”It is a great honour to receive this award, especially since it is my colleagues in DM who have granted me the award. It is important for me to underline the fact that I have a strong team of other researchers and colleagues backing me. It takes many different people and competences in order to conduct complex research in the humanities”, says Rubina Raja. 

UrbNet has become an important but rare major player within the humanities thanks to the funding from the Danish Research Foundation. Since the centre was established in 2015, Rubina Raja has been in the forefront of developing, implementing and optimizing methods of research in past urban societies and their networks.

DM’s award committee highlights Rubina Raja’s position in the world's absolute research elite – especially her work as the leader of the Palmyra Portrait Project since 2012 has been emphasized. Studying more than 4,000 grave portraits from Palmyra in the Syrian Desert, this interdisciplinary collaboration has contributed to computer modelling of the city's population development over centuries. During the Syrian civil war, Rubina Raja furthermore initiated a research project that has traced some of Palmyra’s looted cultural heritage. 

Rubina Raja’s work as a field archaeologist was also highlighted by the committee. Together with a German colleague, she directs an excavation project in the ancient city of Gerasa in Jordan. Furthermore, she is also the co-director of the Danish-Italian excavations of the Forum of Caesar in Rome.

“I hope that the attention which follows DM’s Research Award will highlight how the humanities can be used to solve some of the challenges that our societies face on a daily basis”, says Rubina Raja.

Read DM’s press release (in Danish) here.

Or the Carlsberg Foundation’s press release (also in Danish) here.

Further Links:

·       Excavations in Gerasa, Jordan: The Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project

·       Excavations of the Forum of Julius Caesar: The Caesar’ Forum Project

·       The Palmyra Portrait Project