Matteo Tomasini

Senior Assistant in digital and computational archaeology at the University of Bern. Passionate by interesting problems and political revolution. Photo credit: Love Ekbeck.

“[…] ils se moquaient souvent de ce que je voulais le savoir […]. Mais, malgré ce désespoir, je ne laisse pas de désirer d’être instruit, et ma curiosité trompée est toujours insatiable.” (Voltaire, Le philosophe ignorant1)

Welcome to my website! I am a researcher in digital and computational archaeology, and currently I am employed as a Senior Assistant at the Institute for Archaeological Sciences at the University of Bern. There, I coordinate and develop the Computational and Digital Archaeology (CoDA) Lab. My research interests encompass cultural evolution, prehistoric and ancient navigation, and skyscape archaeology. My specialty is the development and use of agent-based simulations, and I have further experience in mathematical modelling, statistical methods, and 3D techniques.

Ever since my youth I have been curious and interested in all domains of knowledge; I have a wide background and in the years I was lucky to be exposed to different topics within academia. After studying ancient Greek and Latin in high school, I studied theoretical physics at the University of Geneva. Not finding my intellectual home in physics, I did my PhD in population genetics at University of Bern, where I completed my thesis on rapid adaptation in the presence of gene flow, before taking on two separate postdocs in evolutionary biology. After that, I began a stint as research software engineer at the Gothenburg Research Infrastructure in digital humanities where I formed myself in different digital techniques used in archaeology and cultural heritage.

To this day I find all domains of knowledge fascinating and I have interests for the most disparate fields, such as social sciences and the humanities. Because of personal and professional interest, I am involved with activities aiming to highlight the importance of good software and programming practices in research.

  1. Tr: “[…] they often made fun of what I wanted to know […]. But, despite this desperation, I never tire of desiring of being instructed, and my unsatisfied curiosity is always insatiable.” ↩