Istanbul Bilgi University to host archaeology professor

CAMMA "Thursday Talks," organized by Istanbul Bilgi University Cultural Management Master Program (CAMMA) and Cultural Policy and Management Research Center (KPY), will host Professor Ian Hodder, the former director of the Çatalhöyük Research Project and a pioneer of post-processualism theory in archaeology, on June 2.

In the Cultural Policy Yearbook 2022 Keynote Speech, titled "Making Policy for Cultural Heritage: The Example of Çatalhöyük," Hodder will recount numerous attempts at cultural heritage management at Çatalhöyük excavations, which he directed from 1993 to 2018.

Based on these cultural heritage management attempts where there were tensions between local, regional, national and global interests, why cultural policies that assert heritage as a universal value should be softened radically with local cultural concerns will be discussed.

Hodder was trained at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London and at Cambridge University where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1975. After a brief period of teaching at Leeds, he returned to Cambridge where he taught until 1999. In 2021 he moved to teach at Koç University, Istanbul.

His main large-scale excavation projects have been at Haddenham in the east of England and Çatalhöyük in central Turkey. He has been awarded the Oscar Montelius Medal by the Swedish Society of Antiquaries, the Huxley Memorial Medal by the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Fyssen International Prize, and the Gold Medal by the Archaeological Institute of America, and has honorary doctorates from Bristol and Leiden Universities.

In 2019 he was appointed Companion of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George in the Queen's Honors List.