Maikel Kuijpers (1982, Helmond) is Assistant Professor in European Prehistory at the Faculty of Archaeology. His main research topics are Bronze Age metallurgy, material culture, craftsmanship, and skill. The latter two very specific human-material relationships are explored both in archaeology as well as contemporary society.
Maikel graduated at Leiden University in 2008 following the Research Master track together with a minor at the Art Academy in Den Hague. His RMa thesis Bronze Age metalworking in the Netherlands was awarded with the W.A. van Es Prize for Dutch Archaeology. Subsequently, he worked as a research assistant on the Oss excavations and prepared the aansluitingsmodule archeologie.
In 2009 Maikel was awarded a PhD position at the University of Cambridge in the EU founded project Forging Identities: the mobility of culture in the Bronze Age. Under the supervision of Prof. Marie Louise Sørensen his research focused on Early Bronze Age metalworking craftsmanship and skill. In 2012 he became an affiliated researched in the CinBa project (Creativity and Craft in the Middle and Late Bronze Age). Maikel successfully defended his dissertation in 2014, after which he returned to Leiden.
Additionally, Maikel has an ancillary position as director and producer of documentaries and animations (Kuijpers & Gijtenbeek). Among other things, he has worked on film for the National Museum of Antiquities and the animation for the Faculty of Archaeology. Currently, he is working on a documentary on craftsmanship. Fragments from this documentary have already been televised as part of a Tegenlicht documentary. The Garland Magazine, a craftsmanship in the Indo-Pacific focused magazine interviewed Maikel recently on his documentary.
