Jan kolen is Professor of the History and Heritage of European Cultural Landscapes at the Faculty of Archaeology.

More information about Jan Kolen

Curriculum Vitae

Professor Jan (J.C.A.) Kolen (1962) studied Archaeology at Leiden University. After graduating, he worked for the RAAP Foundation at the University of Amsterdam and the NWO Pioneer Project 'Changing view of Ice Age foragers' (Leiden University). In 2005, he obtained his PhD (cum laude) with his dissertation on the ‘Biography of the Landscape’, a new approach to landscape history. Since 2000 he has been affiliated with the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, initially as a lecturer, then as Belvedere Professor of Heritage of Town and Country, and since 2009 as Professor of the History and Heritage of European Cultural Landscapes. In addition, Jan Kolen was Director of the CLUE Interfaculty Research Institute (Heritage and History of the Cultural Landscape and Urban Environment). Since 2013 he has been Professor in Landscape Archaeology and Cultural Heritage at Leiden University, and he is a director at the Centre for Global Heritage and Development at Leiden University, the Technical University of Delft and Erasmus University Rotterdam. He served as Dean of Leiden University's Faculty of Archaeology from 2018 to 2025.