Research associate
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Dr. Marina Ugarković was born in Split, and she graduated Archaeology at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb where she also completed postgraduate doctoral studies and defended her PhD thesis on burial customs of the Greek city of Issa (Vis, eastern Adriatic).
She has been employed at the Institute of archeology since 2009, first as a junior researcher, then as postdoctoral researcher, and from 2019 on a permanent scientific position. She has spent two years as guest-scholar at the University of Vienna and Austrian Academy of Sciences.
Since the end of 2023, she has held the position of the president of the scientific council and head of the scientific department of the Institute of Archaeology. She is the PI of the Croatian Science Foundation's installation research project Transformation of the Adriatic Cosmos: insularity, connectivity and glocal identities of pre-Roman Dalmatia (UIP-2020-02-2419; 2021-2026) and the Institute of Archeology's scientific project Transformation of Identity through the Past (TIPS, 2024-2027). She co-directs the international project Trogir through time. As a collaborator, she previously participated in three scientific projects at the Institute of Archeology (MZOS Ancient Topography, HRZZ RED, MZO-DAAD bilateral project) and several international scientific projects, of which the Cambridge Keros project and the projects of the Austrian Archaeological Institute Die Hafen-Nekropole von Ephesus and Urban fabric of Lousoi are most prominent.
During the last few years, she has been the leader of systematic and rescue excavations of Greek cities in Dalmatia, Stari Grad on Hvar island (Pharos) and Vis on Vis island (Issa). Also, she has previously led archaeological field research on Pakleni islnds (St. Clement), Stobreč, and Trogir as well as post-excavation work in Greece, while participating in numerous excavations in Croatia (Nakovana, Salona, Tilurium, Issa, Trogir), Greece (Keros, Naxos, Priiatikos Pyrgos, Lousoi) and Turkey (Ephesos).
She is the recipient of the Josip Brunšmid Award of the Croatian Archaeological Society, as well as several scholarships, from the Republic of Austria for postdoctoral training, the Austrian Academy of Sciences Joint Excellence in Science and Humanities, the Norwegian Institute in Athens, as well as from the University of Graz. She has been on manifold research stays abroad, in Austria (Vienna, Graz, 2011, 2013, 2015), Germany (Frankfurt, 2010) and Greece (Athens 2009, 2012, 2014, 2015), for which she received several grants.
Over the years she organized several international conferences and round tables in Croatia, Greece and Austria, and participated at over 40 international conferences as well as held several international invited lectures. She has been a member of the Board of International Association for Research on Pottery of the Hellenistic Period (IARPothP) since 2015. Additionally, she also acts as a reviewer of scientific papers and projects, a mentor/co-mentor for PhD and MA students, co-editor of several proceedings and monographs, while various activities (public lectures, exhibitions, publications in the media..) are aimed as an attempt to bring her research closer to the general public.
Her main research interests are the archaeology of the Adriatic and the Mediterranean, with emphasis on the central Adriatic area and the period of the second half of the 1st Millenium BCE, Hellenistic period and protohistory, the Greek cities and indigenous communities in Dalmatia, necropolises and the archaeology of burial rites, processes of cultural transformations, identities, material culture, Hellenistic pottery, archaeometry of ceramics and island archaeology.