Dries Daems

Dries Daems serves as Assistant Professor in Spatial Digital Humanities at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam's Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities within the Art and Culture, History, Antiquity department, while also holding a Visiting Professor position at Helsinki University. His archaeological expertise spans the Iron Age to Hellenistic Mediterranean with methodological specialization in computational approaches.

His research integrates digital humanities with classical archaeology, focusing on social complexity through agent-based modeling, network science, and spatial analysis of material culture. Key interests include urbanism dynamics, artisanal production networks, and human-environment interactions, particularly through pottery studies and socio-ecological simulations. This interdisciplinary approach bridges traditional archaeological methods with advanced computational techniques.

Recent publications demonstrate a clear trend toward methodological innovation in archaeological science, with emphasis on quantifying connectivity through ceramic networks, validating archaeological datasets via simulation frameworks, and developing open computational platforms for modeling past societies. These works consistently apply network theory and spatial analysis to Mediterranean material culture.

• SSH Open Competition XS Grant (2025)

Daems leads significant research initiatives including the 3D-CERA-ML project for machine learning analysis of archaeological ceramics and the ModelPlaza platform for socio-ecological simulations. His collaborative projects involve international teams across Europe and Turkey, with funding supporting computational infrastructure development and methodological standardization in digital archaeology. Current courses include Mobility and Interaction in the Ancient Mediterranean and Digital Practice in Archaeology.

As core faculty at VU Amsterdam's Network Institute, he contributes to interdisciplinary research infrastructure while organizing academic events like the CAA2025 workshop. His work emphasizes open science through platforms like ModelPlaza that provide shared simulation environments for archaeological research communities.