Prof. Daniela De Simone is an archaeologist specialising in early India and Assistant Professor of Indian Studies at Ghent University. Previously, she was Curator of the South Asian Archaeological Collections at the British Museum, where she curated the current displays of South Asian archaeological materials, Assistant Programme Specialist at UNESCO New Delhi, where she worked on the sustainable conservation of Indian old city areas, and Excavation Supervisor at the site of Gotihawa, an important early Buddhist stupa site in the Nepalese Terai, for the Italian Archaeological Mission to Nepal. She studied Indian Languages and Cultures at “L’Orientale”, University of Naples, where she earned her PhD in 2012. Prof. De Simone is the Principal Investigator of The Nilgiri Archaeological Projects: Culture and Environment in the Upland Forests of South India from Antiquity to Early Modernity (2021-2026), funded by an FWO Odysseus II grant, Archaeological Explorations and Investigations in the Gangetic Plains and Neighbouring Regions (2021-2025), funded by Ghent University Special Research Fund (BOF), and Excavations at Bodhgaya, the Site of the Buddha's Enlightenment (2021-2024), funded by the Shelby White and Leon Levy Program for Archaeological Publications at Harvard University.
