University of Cyprus to lead €4.3m EU pottery network that will recruit 15 PhD researchers

The Archaeological Research Unit of the University of Cyprus will coordinate SOPHIA-DN, a European doctoral network on premodern pottery, and the network will recruit 15 PhD researchers. The EU is contributing €4,309,766.28 under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, according to the CORDIS project record, and the project runs from 1 March 2027 to 28 February 2031.

The posts are still to be opened. As the European Office of Cyprus announced on 6 October, hiring is planned for the autumn of 2027, from September to November, through the admission procedure of whichever university or institute hosts each post. The calls will appear on the EU's EURAXESS jobs portal and on the project's and partners' own sites.

Every doctoral student will be supervised jointly by specialists in two or more fields, archaeologists working with geologists, geochemists or computer scientists. Their projects pair laboratory analysis of the pots' materials with experiments that rebuild ancient production methods, and use machine learning to connect large bodies of data; the material studied runs from Neolithic to post-medieval pottery. The eight beneficiary institutions, spread over six EU countries, include The Cyprus Institute and the universities of Padua, Patras and Pisa, and another twelve organisations join as associated partners.

Athanasios K. Vionis is the project coordinator and Maria Dikomitou-Eliadou, lead author of the proposal, is project manager. According to the announcement, the University has coordinated one earlier archaeological-science programme of comparable size.