Daniela De Simone is an Italian archaeologist specialising in the protohistoric and historical archaeology of South Asia and serves as Assistant Professor of South Asian Art and Archaeology at Ghent University. Her research advances a transdisciplinary approach to the study of past societies, focusing on the relationships between human communities, non-human agents, material culture, and ecological systems across forested and maritime environments.
She is Principal Investigator of the Nilgiri Archaeological Project: Culture and Environment in the Upland Forests of South India from Antiquity to Early Modernity (G0F0621N), funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) through an Odysseus Type II grant. This project integrates archaeological fieldwork, palaeoenvironmental data, and Indigenous ecological knowledge to investigate long-term human–environment interactions in the upland forest landscapes of South India. Oceanic Worlds in South Asia. Entangled Seascapes and Counter-histories, funded by Ghent University Special Research Fund (BOF)., which extends this framework to maritime contexts and contributes to the development of Blue Humanities within archaeology by conceptualising oceanic worlds as relational environments shaped by both human and non-human agencies.
Her research also investigates the history of South Asian Buddhism through the study of material culture and archaeological landscapes. In this context, she leads the project project Excavations at Bodhgaya: The Site of the Buddha’s Enlightenment, funded by the White-Levy Program at Harvard University, and Archaeological Explorations and Investigations in the Gangetic Plains and Neighbouring Regions, funded by Ghent University Special Research Fund (BOF) with a Starting Grant.
Before joining Ghent University in 2021, Daniela was Curator of South Asia (Archaeological Collections) at the British Museum and Assistant Programme Specialist at UNESCO New Delhi, where she worked on the sustainable conservation of Indian historic city centres. She also served as Excavation Supervisor at the site of Gotihawa, an early Buddhist site in Nepal, with the Italian Institute for Africa and the Orient (IsIAO).
She holds a PhD in South Asian Studies (Archaeology) from the University of Naples “L’Orientale” (2012) and an MSc in Social Policy and Planning in Developing Countries from the London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE (2007). She has advanced trainng in both Sanskrit and Hindi.
Daniela is the Belgian representative of the European Association for South Asian Archaeology and Art (EASAA) and and currently serves as its President.
