Our Spotlight on series celebrates the world-leading work of our academics. Professor Chris Gerrard is an archaeologist who thrives on taking a cross-discipline approach to uncovering the past, giving rise to fascinating insights and innovative projects.
Watch our video with Chris, and read more about his career and research below.
A childhood spent visiting archaeological sites and local museums sparked Chris’s interest in the past.
He studied for a joint honours in Archaeology and Geology and went on to complete his PhD before working in the private sector in archaeology consultancy and commercial practice.
Chris returned to academia in 1992, joining our Department of Archaeology in 2000. Here Chris has led on projects across the UK and northern Spain, with a particular interest in the transition from Islamic to Christian societies.
Despite the international focus of much of his work, Chris maintains that it is his work here in North East England that has been his most exciting.
Chris was pivotal to the Scottish Soldiers project – which investigated historic human remains discovered in three mass graves during construction work on Palace Green in Durham in 2013.
He spearheaded the award-winning project which solved a 400-year-old mystery and confirmed that these were the remains of 17th century prisoners from the Battle of Dunbar.
Chris collaborated on a book and open-access online course about this project, reaching over 2,000 learners from over 100 countries.
It was a project that captured worldwide media attention, and allowed Chris to share his passion, and expertise, with new audiences.
Chris has also led an eight-year project of excavations at Auckland Palace in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, involving over 1000 students and volunteers.
Through this work, Chris and his team have discovered previously unknown buildings, a missing chapel, gate house, kitchens and a massive curtain wall. All these discoveries have provided new insight and detail into the medieval life of the Palace, and the wider County Durham. They have also attracted significant media attention, featuring on shows including Digging for Britain and Digging Up Britain’s Past. The excavation was also one of the BBC’s archaeology ‘highlights of the year’ for 2025.
Chris champions pushing his subject to new limits.
Not one to stick to traditional archaeological approaches, Chris has also teamed up with historians, physicists and computing experts.
His latest collaboration is looking at past pandemics. Alongside historians and computing colleagues, Chris is part of a project modelling the 1918 influenza outbreak, and the 14th century Black Death. The aim is to understand more about how these diseases spread to help inform future outbreak responses.
Chris enjoys connecting archaeology to people’s everyday lives and making it accessible through public projects. For him, archaeology can help people gain a deeper sense of place, identity and connection to the past. His latest project, Open Lab, in Bishop Auckland, will see members of the public heling out with behind-the-scenes laboratory work which takes place once excavations are finished.
Chris involves students in archaeological excavations as much as possible. He knows there is no substitute for the moment of discovering something no one has seen for hundreds of years. This is when the past comes to life and archaeologists are made.
This commitment to cross-disciplinary collaboration, public engagement, and student mentorship, embodies Chris’s career-long belief in the transformative power of archaeology to connect us all to our shared human story.
