Scott Dunleavy

Dr Scott Dunleavy is a Researcher at the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, within the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. He serves as a Research Associate on the ENTANGLED project based at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, specializing in southeastern Africa's global connections during the Global Middle Ages and Early Modern Period through interdisciplinary historical, archaeological, and ethnographic methodologies.

Education:

• Bachelor's in History from Brunel University London (2018)
• MPhil in World History from the University of Cambridge (Wolfson College)
• PhD in History from the University of Cambridge (Wolfson College) with thesis titled 'Firearm Adoption in the Societies of the lower Zambezi, 1600-1888'

Dr Dunleavy's research centers on Historical Archaeology and African History, with particular emphasis on material culture dynamics, trade networks, and cross-cultural consumption patterns in the Indian Ocean world. His work integrates Portuguese colonial documentation with oral histories from south-central Mozambique to reconstruct maritime economies and coastal-interior trade routes, situating regional developments within global historical frameworks. This interdisciplinary approach bridges archaeological evidence with historical analysis to examine how societies recontextualized technologies like firearms within local social structures.

Within the ENTANGLED project, he contributes to analyzing southern Mozambique's coastal regions (500-1500 CE) as the southwestern frontier of the Indian Ocean world. His focus on early Portuguese records and ethnographic fieldwork illuminates how maritime economies evolved through interactions between coastal communities and interior networks, revealing the complex directionality of cultural exchanges across Africa, Arabia, and Asia during this period.