Gunnel Ekroth

Fellow, SCAS.
Professor of Classical Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University

Gunnel Ekroth received her PhD 1999 in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at Stockholm
University, where she was an externally funded research fellow from 2000-2010. In 2011, she was
appointed Professor of Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University. She has been
a Professeur invité, at the Université de Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne (February 2009), and she is a
membre associé of the Centre ANHIMA at Paris since 2007.

Her research focuses on the ancient Greek world; in particular religion, from both a practical and a
theoretical perspective, integrating ancient texts, inscriptions, iconography and archaeological remains,
including animal bones. She has worked on the ritual practices of Greek hero cults, sacrificial rituals,
including the killing of animals, distribution and consumption of meat and blood, handling of bones
and waste in sanctuaries, and the use and appearance of altars. She is responsible for the publication
of an Archaic (7th-6th c. BC) sanctuary in the Argolid, Greece, with a particular focus on the ceramic
production of this region. 

While at SCAS, she will work on the cognitive and physical manifestation of the ancient Greek notion
temenos and Greek sanctuaries as spaces for human-divine interaction. Among her publications are
The Sacrificial Rituals of Greek Hero-cults and the co-edited volumes Bones, Behaviour and Belief
and Round Trip to Hades.

She is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities.

Gunnel Ekroth is in residence in the autumn of 2023.
This information is accurate as of the academic year 2023-24.