Joakim Goldhahn

Joakim Goldhahn

School of Humanities

Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Economics

Eligible to supervise Masters and PhD - email supervisor to discuss availability.


Professor Joakim Goldhahn (PhD 2000, Umeå University, Sweden) is an internationally renowned archaeologist and a Senior Research Fellow at the School of Humanities. His main areas of expertise include Indigenous archaeology, rock art research, and the European Bronze Age. With a distinguished career spanning continents, he offers a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspective on the study of Indigenous visual cultural heritage, colonial history, cultural memory, human-animal relationships, ritual practices, the history of archaeology, and the making of memory across time and cultures.

Goldhahn is an Adjunct Professor at the Linnæus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Post-Colonial Studies, the School of Cultural Sciences, Sweden (2025-2028), and an Adjunct Researcher at the National Museum of Kenya (2025-2026). He has authored more than 260 research outputs, including 19 books, such as Birds in the Bronze Age (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and Aboriginal Rock Art and the Telling of History (Cambridge University Press, 2024), which he co-authored with Laura Rademaker, Sally K. May, and Gabriel Maralngurra. In recognition of his contributions to the field of archaeology, he was awarded the Oscar Montelius Prize by The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History, and Antiquities in 2018.

Since 2020, Goldhahn has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed journal Open Archaeology.

I concurrently conduct research in northern Europe, primarily focusing on the Bronze Age (2350-500 BC), western Arnhem Land in northern Australia, and among the Samburu in northern Kenya. A common thread among these research areas is my long-standing interest in what we, in search of a better term, call rock art: visual images that convey different forms of cultural identities and worldviews. A recent venue that I have explored and would like to deepen through further research is how different forms of audio-visual media are used in the intergenerational transmission of cultural knowledge and practice. 

  • Appointments

    Date Position Institution name
    2024 - ongoing Senior Research Fellow University of Adelaide
    2020 - 2024 Rock Art Australia Ian Potter Kimberley Chair The University of Western Australia
    2009 - 2020 Professor of Archaeology Linnaeus University
    2006 - 2009 Senior Lecturer Kalmar University College
    2002 - 2006 Reader University of Gothenburg
    2001 - 2002 Lecturer Lund University
    1997 - 2000 PhD Scholarship Umeå University

I am currently the Chief Investigator (CI) for two research projects: the ARC SRI-funded Art at a Crossroads: Aboriginal Responses to Contact in Northern Australia (2021–2025), and the international project Making Rock Art Today: Encounters with Practising Samburu Rock Art Painters (2025-2028), funded by the Swedish research foundation Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. 

My ongoing research in Australia and Kenya is committed to collaborative, community-led research approaches that foreground Indigenous knowledges and perspectives.

I am currently in a research-focused role, but I am happy to discuss any supervision that falls within my area of expertise. 


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