Andreas Angourakis

Dr Angourakis is a computational archaeologist with a strong background in Humanities and Social Sciences specialising in simulating socio-environmental systems in the past. His main concern is to tackle meaningful theoretical questions about human behaviour and social institutions and their role in the biosphere, as documented by history and archaeology. His research focuses specifically on how social behaviour reflects long-term historical processes, especially those concerning food systems in past small-scale societies. Among the aspects investigated are competition for land use between sedentary farmers and mobile herders (Angourakis et al. 2014; Angourakis 2014), cooperation for food storage (Angourakis et al. 2015), origins of agriculture and domestication of plants (Angourakis et al. 2021, submitted), the sustainability of subsistence strategies and resilience to climate change (Angourakis et al. 2020). He has almost ten years of experience with simulation Simulation Modelling (ABM/Predictive/Economic modelling), particularly agent-based Simulation Modelling (ABM/Predictive/Economic modelling), and computational data analysis in archaeology. When using simulation, he funnelled the contributions of interdisciplinary teams into the creation of formal models and developed part, or the entirety of the computer code required. With a combination of autonomous and collaborative work, he developed, implemented, or worked with many simulation models, discussing with domain-expert researchers and broader audiences their implications in light of archaeological, historical, and ethnographic questions and data.

Dr. Angourakis research has been willingly directed to unravel the mechanisms linking past societies and their environment, in tandem with the archaeological and palaeoenvironmental research agendas regarding specific case studies and questions. However, rewarding this arrangement often meant that pursuing deeper methodological advances assumed a secondary role. This has been particularly true for pursuing approaches crossing over the hard border between science and creative disciplines. In the last five years, the candidate had a few, much appreciated opportunities to learn about the bones of trade of game development and engage with professionals in Creative Industries. On his own initiative, he has taken online courses on various aspects, from game design to 3D Simulation Modelling (ABM/Predictive/Economic modelling).