Manuel Fernández-Götz - Biography#

Manuel Fernández-Götz studied at the universities of Seville, Madrid, and Kiel, completing a binational PhD on the transformation of Iron Age societies in northeast Gaul. After finishing his doctorate in 2012, he coordinated the Heuneburg project at the State Office for Cultural Heritage Baden-Württemberg. From 2013 to 2024 he worked at the University of Edinburgh, first as Chancellor's Fellow/Lecturer and then as Reader in European Archaeology. From 2019 to 2022 he was Head of the Archaeology Department, and in 2022 he was appointed Abercromby Professor of Archaeology, an established chair first held by V. Gordon Childe. In 2025 he moved to the University of Oxford, where he is now Professor of Later European Prehistory.

Manuel Fernández-Götz's main areas of interest are Iron Age and Roman societies in Europe, the archaeology of identities, early urbanism, and conflict archaeology. He has authored over 250 publications, and directed fieldwork projects in Germany, Spain, the UK, and Croatia. In recognition of this research, he was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize (2016), the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Thomas Reid Medal (2021), and the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award (2026). He has also held visiting scholar positions at Cambridge, London, Brown, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Berlin, and taught as visiting staff at Beijing and Munich. From 2021 to 2025 he was PI of the Leverhulme Trust-funded project “Beyond Walls: Reassessing Iron Age and Roman Encounters in Northern Britain”.