Cécile Ansieau
Cécile Ansieau, archaeologist from UCLouvain, has been working for more than 30 years at the Agence Wallonne du Patrimoine – AWaP (Public Service of Wallonia), where she has mainly practiced preventive archaeology on urban and rural sites. Since 1997, she has been involved in the activities of the Centre de Recherches archéologiques fluviales - CRAF. She co-directed prospecting operations in the Meuse from 1998 and then in 2007 and 2022 and directed the archaeological excavation of the early modern river port of Hastière. She has also participated in other interventions on Ourthe, Semois and Haine. She also co-led the underwater archaeology project and archaeological field school at the Cave of Han (Belgium) managed by the CRAF association. Recently, she joined the Scientific and Technical Department of the AWaP as head of archaeological heritage related to rivers.
Wim De Clercq
Wim De Clercq (°1973) is Full Professor of Historical Archaeology of Northwestern Europe. In 2011 he founded the Historical Archaeology Research Group which focuses strongly on the relationship between humans and the landscape in Roman times and the Middle Ages in Northwestern Europe , with an emphasis on the development of the Bruges maritime landscape. He is the main supervisor of the Ghent University CRA-project "High Tide - Low Tide: The late medieval harbor system of Bruges as a maritime-cultural landscape." and the Weave-project: “Drowned villages of the Eastern Scheldt river estuary”. In this context he published on the Bruges outer harbor system, on ballast stones and on the material culture of maritime communities.
An Degraeve
Christophe Delaere
Christophe Delaere is currently (2024) a FNRS Research Fellow at the Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, and anterior a junior research fellow at the Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology, United Kingdom. His research focuses on Andean and inland water archaeology. He leads underwater and coastal archaeological excavation project at Lake Titicaca since 2012 and in the high-altitude lakes socio-ecosystems of the central Andes. He is the coeditor of “Underwater and Coastal Archaeology in Latin America” edited at University Press of Florida (2023). His interests include ancient complex societies, human-environment interactions, and the development of methods applied to the study of inundated cultural landscapes. Since 2012, Christophe also co-led the underwater archaeology project and the archaeological field school at the Cave of Han (Belgium), managed by the "Centre de Recherche Archéologique Fluviales - CRAF" association. This research group is dedicated to the study and promotion of underwater archaeological heritage in the southern part of Belgium.
Rik Lettany
Rik Lettany obtained an MA in archaeology and art history at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) and specialized in maritime and underwater archaeology at the Syddansk Universitet (Denmark). He graduated with a study of the early modern Zeebrugge-shipwreck (BE), for which he was awarded the Geoff Egan Prize and was commended by the committee of the Keith Muckelroy Memorial Award. Rik worked for the Flanders Heritage Agency (BE) in the frame of the SeArch-Project, which focused on the protection and management of underwater cultural heritage in the Belgian part of the North Sea. He later worked for Center for Artefact Research. Currently, Rik is enrolled as a PhD candidate at Leiden University (the Netherlands). His research is funded by the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands and focuses on the construction of the Scheurrak SO1 shipwreck and early modern Dutch shipbuilding practices.
Emilia Mataix Ferrándiz
Emilia Mataix Ferrándiz is a tenure-track Ramón y Cajal fellow at the International University of Catalonia (Barcelona). Previously, she was a María Zambrano fellow at the University of the Basque Country (Spain) and has served as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki and a research fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg Münster. She holds a PhD in Roman Law from the University of Alicante and the Facoltà di Giurisprudenza in Palermo, as well as a second PhD in Roman Archaeology from the University of Southampton and Lyon 2 La Lumière.
She has published extensively on Roman law with a focus on maritime issues. She is the editor of two volumes: Roman Law and Maritime Commerce (EUP 2022) and Seafaring and Mobility in the Late Antique Mediterranean (Bloomsbury 2022). Additionally, she is the author of the monograph Shipwrecks, Legal Landscapes, and Mediterranean Paradigms: Gone Under Sea (Brill 2022). She is currently working on her new monograph, Negotiating Commercial Intelligibility: A Holistic Approach to the Study of Roman Imperial Trade (OUP). Since 2021, she has been one of the main organizers of the research group and seminar series Down by the Water: Global Conversations in Maritime Archaeology.
Tine Missiaen
Tine Missiaen is a marine geophysicist and senior researcher at Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) where she leads the research group ‘Seascapes Past and Future’. Her main experience lies in acoustic subseafloor imaging for geotechnical, palaeolandscape and environmental studies, and the use of ultra-high-resolution 3D seismic imaging for (archaeological) object detection. She has coordinated and supervised various research projects on palaeolandscape reconstruction and the characterization of submerged archaeology, and was one of the main instigators of the collaborative consortium ‘Deep History: Revealing the palaeolandscape and archaeological potential of the southern North Sea’.
Jordy Moies
Jordy Moies (°1998) studied archaeology at KU Leuven and went on to study maritime archaeology at the University of Aix-Marseille. He has been involved in several coastal and underwater projects across the North Sea and the Mediterranean, namely in Belgium, France, Greece, Turkey, and Tunisia. In 2022 and 2023 he co-directed a bathymetric survey with Flemish Hydrography to monitor and study the preservation and site formation processes of historical shipwrecks in the North Sea. Since 2022 he has been part of the Aigina Harbour-City Project (Greece) and is currently a team member of the UNESCO-Unitwin network for Underwater Archaeology coordinated by Aix-Marseille University. Jordy started his PhD in 2023 at the Centre Camille Jullian (University of Aix-Marseille – CNRS) titled” The vulnerability of Maritime cultural heritage in the Mediterranean: assessment of the effects of human activity, natural factors and climate change”. His work focuses on innovative and interdisciplinary approaches for the assessment of vulnerabilities and risks of coastal and shallow-submerged archaeological sites in the Mediterranean Sea.
Johan Opdebeeck
Drs Johan Opdebeeck (1974) had two master degrees (Ma) in archaeology at the K.U.Leuven before obtaining his Msc in Maritime archaeology at the University of Southampton in 2005. Between 2005 and 2009, he participated in several land based and underwater archaeological excavations around the world. From 2009 onwards, he works as a maritime archaeologist and senior researcher for the Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency.
Marnix Pieters
Marnix Jacques Pieters (°1962), archaeologist and soil scientist, is Senior Archaeologist at Flanders Heritage Agency (Agentschap Onroerend Erfgoed). From 1992 till 2005 he directed a large-scale excavation project focused on the late mediaeval (13th-15th centuries AD) fishing settlement of Walraversijde situated on the coast of Flanders next to Ostend (Belgium). The scope of his research widened from the material living world of mediaeval fishing folk to Underwater Cultural Heritage (UCH) as a whole including the legal aspects of dealing with this relatively unknown and until today somewhat neglected heritage. Member of ICOMOS international scientific committee on Underwater Cultural Heritage (ICUCH) since 2006, Member of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Board of the UNESCO 2001 Convention on the protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage (STAB) since 2021 and guest professor of the Free University of Brussels (VUB) with a master course on ‘Archaeology of Coast and Sea’ since 2013.
Nathalie Pil
Nathalie Pil (°1979) studied mathematics at the UCLL and archaeology at the VUB and currently works as a teaching assistant at the VUB. As a (zoo)archaeologist she studied the role of craft production in relation to the development of supra-regional trade and market organization in the North Sea Area. Next to that she was involved in the study of the Merovingian collection of the museum of Tongeren. Currently she works on TESTEREP, an interdisciplinary research project, studying the evolution of the Belgian coastal landscape over the past 5000 years both onshore and offshore.
Ruth Plets
Ruth Plets (°1980) is a marine geologist with experience in high-resolution geophysical methods and with a keen interest in marine geo-archaeology and Quaternary stratigraphy. After being awarded her degree in geology at Ghent University, she obtained an MSc in Oceanography and PhD in Geosciences from Southampton University, and subsequently worked at Memorial University (Canada) and Ulster University (Northern Ireland). Her research aims to use and develop methods used in the geosciences for marine archaeological purposes. Since 2019, she is employed as palaeo-landscape researcher at the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) in Ostend (Belgium). Current projects include the international project ‘Deep History: Revealing the palaeo-landscape and archaeological potential of the southern North Sea’ and the multidisciplinary project ‘TESTEREP: The evolution of the Flemish Seascape (5000 BP – present)’.
Sven Van Haelst
Jessica Vandevelde
Jessica Vandevelde (°1980) graduated in 2002 as Master in Archaeology at Ghent University, with a dissertation on the material culture of the late medieval fishing village of Heist. She directed excavations in Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands, with a focus on medieval and post-medieval urban sites. Since 2009 she works as a heritage consultant for the Flanders Heritage Agency, where her work area includes the coast and coastal plain of Flanders. She is a member of the policy commission for the Marine Spatial Structure Plan and the policy commission for the Coast Protection 2100 plan. Jessica is an experienced diver and a longstanding member of the VLIZ scientific diving team, assisting research on the many shipwreck sites in the Belgian North Sea since more than 10 years.
Dries Vergouwen
Dries Vergouwen studied Art Studies and Archaeology at the VUB from 2018-2022. The first semester of his Masters program he went to Cyprus where he followed the ‘Masters Programme in Field Archaeology on Land and Under the Sea’. The Roman capital of Cyprus was also the main topic of his Master thesis ‘Come sail your Ships around me. Studying the Roman Harbour Infrastructure and Seascape of Nea Paphos using a Viewshed Analysis’ for which he was awarded the VLIZ Master Thesis Award 2022. Prof. Dr. Ralf Vandam from VUB and Prof. Dr. Apostolos Sarris from University of Cyprus were his supervisors. During his studies at VUB he followed the extracurricular program Talent voor Onderzoek for which he was part of the team of the Hala Sultan Tekke Hinterland Survey Project, coordinated by VUB and MARI, for two consecutive campaigns. In October 2023, he started his applied Phd ‘Revealing the Senne: a hidden landmark in the historical center of Brussels’ which is a collaboration between VUB and Urban.brussels, funded by Innoviris and has a duration of four years. Prof. Dr. Ralf Vandam and Prof. Dr. Yannick Devos from VUB and Ann Degraeve and Marc Meganck from Urban.brussels are his supervisors.
Jeroen Vermeersch
Jeroen Vermeersch (°1981) studied archaeology in Leuven and Cologne and maritime archaeology in Southampton. He has been involved in the excavation and documentation of a variety of shipwrecks, including the Kizilburun Column Wreck in Turkey (summers of 2005-2007), the Newport Medieval Ship Project in Wales (2008), the monitoring of the early modern wrecks of Burgzand Noord and the International Fieldschool for Maritime Archaeology Flevoland in the Netherlands (2009-2010), De Kogge-project in Belgium (2010-2014), the Search-Project in Belgium (2015) and the IJsselcog-project in the Netherlands (2015-2016). Currently he is researching the medieval ship remains from the Scheldt and Zwin basin as part of his PhD-project at the University of Ghent and since 2023 he is working as senior advisor management North Sea for Rijkswaterstaat.
Soetkin Vervust
Soetkin Vervust (°1986) studied both Archaeology and Geography at Ghent University and currently works at the VUB as a postdoctoral researcher. As a landscape archaeologist she studies how landscapes have developed from ancient times till the present day in both the North Sea area and the Mediterranean. She currently coordinates TESTEREP, an interdisciplinary research project, studying the evolution of the Belgian coastal landscape over the past 5000 years both onshore and offshore.