Roos van Oosten is an assistant professor in Medieval and Urban Archaeology at Leiden University. She has a broad research interest reflected in numerous publications on diverse topics: sanitation management, the textile industry, cemeteries and burial practices, historical cooking, ceramics and environmental archaeology. She has realised seven edited books and five archaeological historical GIS projects in collaboration with colleagues. She is actively involved in Mapping historical Leiden, is an editor of the historical yearbook Flehite and sits on the editorial board of the APL, the annual journal of the Faculty of Archaeology. Currently, she is working with the archaeological-historical team Scheurrak SO1 on a monograph of this late 16th-century shipwreck and its artefacts.

More information about Roos van Oosten

Research

Roos van Oosten's main interest is in socio-economic topics such as sanitation management, urban hygiene infrastructure and the phenomena of the urban revolution. A secondary research focus is pre-industrial ceramic distribution patterns and long-term economic trends in the Low Countries.

Teaching Activities

Roos van Oosten lectures on urban and medieval archaeology in both the BA and the MA programmes (Global Archaeology and Applied Archaeology). She is an internship coordinator and supervises BA, MA and PhD theses. She is also serving as the Faculty's Director of Education.

Selected Curriculum Vitae

Roos van Oosten has been assistant professor in Medieval and Urban Archaeology at Leiden University since 2011. After receiving MAs from Leiden University in Archaeology (2003) and History (2006), she worked as a contract archaeologist for several years. She then earned a PhD from the University of Groningen in the Department of History and has since published the monograph De stad, het vuil en de beerput, on sanitation management in Dutch urban towns in the late medieval and early modern periods.

She has led several historical-archaeological GIS projects, Dangerous cities, Ranking the towns, Leiden’s pubscape, 1816–1894, Mapping pre-industrial sanitation infrastructure in the town of Haarlem, and received an NWO-Alfa Meerwaarde grant for the project Mapping pre-industrial sanitation infrastructure in the town of Leiden followed by a DANS Small Data Project grant in 2016 for phase 2. Growing out of these and later projects, she was instrumental in forming the working group Mapping historical Leiden. This seven-member consortium is a fruitful and vibrant collaboration between academics, Leiden’s regional heritage agency Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken and independent researchers. She was awarded the prestigious Veni grant for Challenging the paradigm of filthy and unhealthy medieval towns.

Currently she is working with the archaeological-historical team Scheurrak SO1 on a monograph on the artefacts recovered from this late-16th-century shipwreck.

Roos van Oosten is one of the initiators of Archaeologists4Future.

Professional service

Roos van Oosten is a member of the advisory board of Premodern Healthscaping and a member of the advisory board of Coping with drought. She is a member of the W.A. van Es Award committee and chair of the Dutch Society for Medieval Archaeology. She has served on several NWO (Humanities) selection committees.

Contact

For students who wish to make an appointment to discuss their thesis or internship, please do not hesitate to email me or drop by when I am in my office.

Publications