Marie Louise Stig Sørensen

Marie Louise Stig Sørensen FBA FSA (born 1954) is a Danish archaeologist and academic. She is Professor of European Prehistory and Heritage Studies at the University of Cambridge^[1] and Professor of Bronze Age Archaeology at the University of Leiden. Her research focuses on Bronze Age Europe, heritage, and archaeological theory.

Early life[edit]

Sørensen was born in Denmark in 1954. She graduated from the University of Aarhus in 1981,^[2] and later received a PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1985 on the subject of the Bronze Age to Iron Age transition in Scandinavia.^[3][2]

Career[edit]

Sørensen was appointed at the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge in 1987.^[4] In 2011 she was appointed a Reader at the University of Cambridge, and in 2012 she became a Professor in Bronze Age studies at the University of Leiden.^[3][5] She is a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge where she is Director of Studies in Archaeology and in Human, Social, and Political Sciences.^[6]

She has received research funding from a range of research councils, including the Cultural Heritage and the Re-construction of Identities after Conflict project, and the Leverhulme Trust-funded Changing Beliefs of the Human Body project.^[7] Sørensen is undertaking excavations at the Bronze Age tell at Százhalombatta, Hungary,^[8] and at an early Luso-African settlement on Santiago Island, Cape Verde.^[9]

Her monograph Gender Archaeology is a key publication.^[3]

Honours and awards[edit]

Sørensen was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA) on 10 October 2010.^[10] In 2022, she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.^[11]

Sørensen was awarded the 16th European Archaeology Heritage Prize in 2014, in recognition of her exceptional contributions to heritage preservation.^[12] She gave the Felix Neubergh lecture at the Gothenburg University, Sweden,^[6] and received the Rigmor and Carl Holst-Knudsens Science Prize from Aarhus University in 2014.^[2] In 2019 she was elected as a member of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters.^[4]

Selected publications[edit]

• Sørensen M.L.S. 1997. Reading Dress: the construction of social categories and identities in Bronze Age Europe. Journal of European Archaeology 5(1), 93–114.
• Diaz-Andreu M. and Sørensen M.L.S. 1998. Excavating Women: A History of Women in European Archaeology. London: Routledge.
• Sørensen M.L.S. 2000. Gender Archaeology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Sørensen M.L.S. 2009. Gender, Material Culture and Identity in the Viking Age Diaspora. Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 5, 245–261.
• Sorensen M.L.S. and Rebay-Salisbury K. 2009. Landscapes of the body: burials of the Middle Bronze Age in Hungary. European Journal of Archaeology 11(1), 49–74. DOI: 10.1177/1461957108101241
• Rebay-Salisbury, K., Sorensen, M.L.S and Hughes, J. (eds.), 2010. Body Parts and Bodies Whole: Changing Relations and Meanings. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
• Sørensen M.L.S. 2010. Households. In T. Earle (ed.), Organizing Bronze Age Societies. The Mediterranean, Central Europe & Scandinavia Compared. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 122–154.

References[edit]