Alison Klevnäs

Alison Klevnäs has been affiliated with the Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies at Stockholm University since 2012, first as a postdoctoral researcher, then as a fixed-term senior lecturer and now as a researcher. She gained her 'Docentur' (Habilitation) in 2021.

Her undergraduate degree is in Archaeology from the University of Cambridge and she has an MA in Viking and Early Medieval Studies from Uppsala University. She completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2010, investigating Merovingian-period grave disturbance in northern and western Europe, with the main case study in Anglo-Saxon England. This was published as a monograph in 2013.

At Stockholm University she turned to Viking Age burials, publishing evidence of re-engagements with graves at the famous boat-grave cemetery at Vendel in Uppland and across Scandinavia. She has also continued research on early medieval mortuary customs, showing that communities across Europe adopted a practice of re-entering graves and removing selected objects from them from the late sixth century AD. Her expertise includes methodologies for the identification of post-burial disturbance  and she is a founder member of the Archaeothanatology Working Group.

From 2018 to 2022 she was editor of Current Swedish Archaeology, Sweden's leading peer-reviewed journal for the discipline, together with Sophie Bergerbrant.

At Stockholm Alison has supervised 16 successful MA dissertations and co-supervised Anna Sörman's 2018 PhD thesis. She is currently PhD co-supervisor for Meghan Mattsson McGinnis, André Nordin, Jenny Nyberg and Moa Råhlander.

She has co-ordinated two themes in the SU Humanities Faculty interdisciplinary Doctoral School in the Humanities: from 2017-2019 'Materiality and the Human' and from 2020-2021 the theme 'Digital Humanities'. This involved designing and directing courses for PhD students across the Humanities Faculty. At MA level she directed the dissertation course for 7 years from 2013-2019 and directed and taught the theory courses from 2012-2018. Undergraduate teaching includes the Viking Age in Northern Europe and along the Eastern Routes from 2016-2018 and the first-year field excavation course in 2017 and 2018.

From 2018 to 2021 she led a project funded by Vetenskapsrådet / The Swedish Research Council entitled 'Att handskas med de döda. Tro och tvist i Europa efter Rom (450-750 e. kr.)' / 'Interacting with the dead. Belief and conflict in Early Medieval Europe (AD 450-750)' with Astrid Noterman as postdoctoral researcher.

Alison is PI for the project 'Collecting the dead: life course and kin relations in the transition to churchyard burial on Gotland (c.950-1250 AD)' funded by Stiftelsen Marcus and Amalia Wallenbergs Minnesfond from 2023-2024.