Dr Chiara Bonnachi

I am an internationally active researcher in the field of heritage studies. My work focuses on investigating the intersection between contemporary experiences and public uses of the past, identity building, social change and politics in the digital age. Over the past ten years, I have developed interdisciplinary teaching, research, impact and public engagement activities in this area, with the aim to generate research-led innovation with social purpose. In doing so, I have drawn on knowledge, methods and collaborations cutting across the fields of archaeology and history, computing science, sociology and political science.

My most recent book, Heritage and Nationalism: Understanding populism through big data (2022), is the first to leverage millions of social media data points to investigate the ways in which people’s understanding of the pre-modern past shape political identities, with a specific focus on populist nationalist sentiment and narratives. Recent projects I have led or co-led include a major research grant exploring present-day values associated with the Iron Age and Roman past (2016-19) and a Follow-on for impact and engagement award entitled Co-producing Tolerant Futures through Ancient Identities (2022). The latter is a collaboration with Durham University and eight museums and heritage sites in Scotland, England and Wales. It aims to support the development of inclusivity in British society by exposing and challenging antagonistic ways of presenting ‘the other’ in the past and the present. This research has featured in outlets including Nature News, the Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph and British Archaeology.

I am also the co-founder of the MicroPasts crowdsourcing platform (2013-present). This website has enabled the co-production of open data and community-based projects in archaeology and heritage through collaborations between people inside and outside heritage institutions. This work has had impact on the cultural and heritage sectors, for example by informing the practices of organisations such as Historic Environment Scotland, Historic England, Arts Council England, British Film Institute, the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.

I serve on the International Executive Board of the Association for Critical Heritage Studies, I am member of the AHRC Peer Review College and have held visiting fellowships including at the Universities of Helsinki and at the Norwegian Institute of Cultural Heritage Research.

Previous Employment: Before joining the University of Edinburgh, in March 2022, I have held positions as Post-doctoral Researcher at the University of Newcastle and UCL, as Co-Investigator Researcher at UCL, and as Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at the University of Stirling.

Education: I hold a BA in Archaeology and an MA in Medieval Archaeology from the University of Florence. I completed a PhD in Public Archaeology from the UCL Institute of Archaeology (2012).