Graduate Program in Balkan and Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology

I am a senior heritage consultant in Australia, an associate researcher at the Bulgarian Centre for Underwater Archaeology and Adjunct Professor at the Department of Archaeology at the NBU. I am a maritime archaeologist studying continuity and change in the life of coastal communities through the evolution of seafaring. I am also a certified ADAS Part II surface air supply commercial diver.

I was born on the Western Black Sea Coast (Burgas, Bulgaria) and studied archaeology in Bonn (Germany) and Sofia (Bulgaria), where I got my PhD. My current academic interests are focused on wooden shipbuilding and seafaring in the Golden Age of Sail, maritime connectivity and coastal and maritime human landscapes. The main topic of my current research is continuity and change in seafaring practices along the Western Black Sea in the late 18^th and 19^th centuries, or the clash between local tradition and globalization as reflected in the evolution of society, economy and seafaring technology.

My technical expertise is in the digital recording of sites and artefacts through photogrammetry, laser scanning and digital illustration. In archaeological fieldwork I engage with wooden ship constructions, ship-related items and archaeological ceramics.

I am a core researcher at the Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project (Black Sea MAP) deep water expedition working side by side with Prof. Jon Adams (Southampton University), Prof. Johan Rönnby (Södertörn University, Stockholm), Assoc. Prof. Koum Batchvarov (University of Connecticut) and Dr Kalin Dimitrov (CUA Sozopol); I directed the underwater excavations of the St. Nicholas Bay Shipwreck in Chernomorets, Bulgaria in 2015.

Determined by my life-long passion for the sea, the usual place you’ll find me if not at work, would be somewhere along the Pacific Coast of Australia at sailing, surfing or diving.