Ian Kuijt

Ian Kuijt is an SFU alumnus, archaeologist, and filmmaker.

He completed a BA in History at the Univ. of Lethbridge and then obtained his MA at SFU. After working in heritage consulting, Ian completed his PhD at Harvard University, focusing on Neolithic household and village organization in the Near East. He has interests in the human history of rural life, small-scale human communities, abandoned social and physical landscapes, and the development of the first villages.

Ian is a Full Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame. He directs the Cultural Landscapes of the Irish Coast project, to learn about island life off Western Ireland from the 1780s to 1960s. Beyond archaeological excavations, this has included the co-development of the 2020 documentary, Nets of Memory, on traditional fishnet and boat building. Since 2016 he has been co-directing a film project called Barn Stories, that seeks to record the disappearing history and heritage of rural lifeways. This has included oral history interviews and filming in northern Indiana farming homesteads, and in 2018-2020, developing this into a broader comparative project with filming and interviews in Sweden, Canada, England, Ireland and Turkey.