York researcher awarded Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship

Dr Akinbowale Akintayo, a postdoctoral researcher at the University's Department of Archaeology, was awarded the Early Career Fellowship of Leverhulme Trust to fund his research about landscape assessment of Africa's first cultural landscape to be inscribed into the World Heritage List - Sukur Cultural Landscape in northern Nigeria.

By analysing landscape change in Sukur over the last twenty-five years, Dr Akintayo's interdisciplinary work, drawing on archaeology, geography, heritage management, Geographic Information System, and remote sensing analyses, will help to assess recent threats to the sustainability of Sukur World Heritage Site. Using state-of-the-art GIS and remote sensing technologies, combined with field observation and landscape modelling, Dr Akintayo's work aims to examine negative impacts on Sukur Cultural Landscape of recent vandalism and Climate Change.

Speaking of his award, Dr Akintayo expressed his delight: "It is an honour to be one of the recipients of the prestigious Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship this year. This award will enable me to expand the scope of my research in Sukur which I started in 2022 through the Global Archaeology, Sustainable Archaeology, and Archaeology of Sustainability fellowship of the Deutsche Archäologische Institut. I am also privileged that my proposal was selected by the department to go through to the application stage of this fellowship”.

Since the inception of the fellowship in 2008, Dr Akintayo is the first researcher from the Department of Archaeology, University of York to be awarded the fellowship. Stephanie Wynne-Jones, Mentor for the ECF and Deputy Head of Department speaking of Dr Akintayo's award "We are delighted that Akinbowale has been awarded this prestigious fellowship. We are really excited to see how his research progresses and sure that he will produce great things!".