Johan Verspay

Background

About Johan Verspay

I graduated in 2007 at the University of Amsterdam on my thesis on Rural Brabant during the Late Middle Ages and early Modern Period. This research continued to fascinate me. After that I started working at the AAC/Projectenbureau, the archaeological research office of the UvA. The close relations between research, education and the archaeological practice I found particular appealing. The opportunity I got to put the lessons learned to practice were especially valuable and resulted i.a. therein that I won the SIKB trophy for ‘Best Research Design Brief’. When in 2011 the AAC/Projectenbureau passed into Diachron UvA bv, I saw opportunities to build a new business. As a senior KNA-archaeologist I have been working as a project manager for the Southern Netherlands. A lot of energy I got from the challenge to connect our services to the needs of our clients; to let archaeological research not only be of value to the scientific community, but also to provide added value beyond. The close cooperation with our customers I found very rewarding. That delivering customized solutions can provide new opportunities as well proved our research on the agricultural landscape of Veldhoven, for which I was awarded the ‘Grand Prize of the Dutch Field Archaeology’. At the start of the 2015 it was time for a reorientation. I then started as a research associate at the UvA for a study on ‘Village formation in the Middle Ages’, a project by the Cultural Heritage Agency. Somewhat sooner than planned, I also started working as a freelance researcher with my own company: Creative Archaeology. As such I support my clients in research on rural communities during the Late Middle Ages and early Modern Period. This research also forms the subject of my doctoral research which I recently started at the University of West Bohemia. This combination of project (field)work, synthesizing research and an in-depth study allows me to develop myself further along this theme in the coming period.