Rubina Raja is professor of classical archaeology and art at Aarhus University, Denmark. She specializes in the archaeology and art of the Greek and Roman east and wider eastern Mediterranean with a focus on cities, societies, and self-representational aspects between 300 BCE and 300 CE, including artistic and architectural traditions. Raja heads several major collaborative research projects focusing on the archaeology and history of the wider Eastern Mediterranean, including the Palmyra Portrait Project and the Semper Ardens Advanced Grant project, Locally Crafted Empires, both focusing on portrait sculpture, and the Lost Cities Rediscovered project, a project which pivots on legacy data and archaeological archives to push for future research agendas. Raja has headed several fieldwork projects in the Mediterranean and Middle East and between 2015 and 2025 she was the director of the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions. She has published widely on topics concerning the Greek and Roman East and wider Eastern Mediterranean from the Hellenistic to early Medieval periods. Her books include Pearl of the Desert: A History of Palmyra (Oxford University Press 2022), Urban Development and Regional Identity in the Eastern Roman Provinces, 50 BC – AD 250: Aphrodisias, Athens, Ephesos, Gerasa (Museum Tusculanum 2012), Palmyrene Sarcophagi (with O. Bobou, Brepols 2023), and Nurturing the Elite (with O. Bobou and I. Bucci, Brepols 2026).
Rubina Raja
