Young Researchers in Archaeometry
A workshops series for ECRs by ECRs
YRA aims to give early career researchers (ECRs) in the archaeological sciences the opportunity to present their research in a friendly environment surrounded only by young students from the same field. We welcome all persons involved in archaeometry research of different nationalities and levels, from master students to first postdoctoral fellows.
With our mailing list, we offer ECRs an possibility to interact with each other between the workshops. While announced here as the major communication outlet for the YRA workshops beside the webpage, any subscriber is welcomed to use it for, e.g., sharing job advertisements, searching for collaborators, or having discussions about any topic related to archaeological sciences and/or being an early career researcher.
The journey
The idea for the workshop was born in 2016 in an discussion about why so few ECRs are joining the German archaeological sciences conference “Archäometrie & Denkmalpflege” (Archaeometry & preservation of historic monuments). Beside the psychological barrier of delivering the first conference presentation in front of very distinguished researchers, it was realised that the archaeological sciences are often dispersed among many different institutes and work groups, making it very difficult for ECRs to get in contact with peers.
Since the first workshop in Frankfurt in 2017, all YRA workshops stayed true to the original idea. While originally aiming for the German community, the workshops became soon orientated towards an international audience with about 50% of the participants in the second edition being internationals. Already in 2019, it became an international workshop series with being organised at an institution outside of Germany for the first time. The latest step is to purposefully keep the hybrid format to become more inclusive to colleagues unable to attend the workshop in person while keeping the benefits of in-person meetings for networking.
With every new edition, the structures for YRA became more and more professionalised. Beginning with the processing of abstracts and registration in 2019, followed by the logo, mail address and a first webpage in 2022 and resulting in this webpage and the mailing list in 2023. Consequently, workload shifted more and more towards the local organisation while templates now exist for most other tasks. This, and the active support from previous organisers whenever needed, makes the YRA workshops particularly suited to gather first experiences as workshop organiser. And it is what keeps YRA staying true to its motto: for ECRs by ECRs.
If you are interested in organising the next workshop or have ideas for additional events, please get in touch via mail.
The YRA logo
Designing a logo for YRA was not an easy task. Without doubt, the biggest challenge was to create a logo that represents the huge breadth of disciplines working together in the archaeological sciences and represents the target group. As a consequence, decisions were made for a very abstract logo and we are aware it is not very intuitive.
The logo writes “YRA” embedded in a spectra-like line with each letter having a different colour and the grey coloured parts as connecting lines. The trowel-shaped arrows outline the negative space (“hole”) of the letters R and A and are inspired by the markers for characteristic peaks. The colours do not have a special meaning. They were chosen because this combination is colour-blind friendly and pleasing to the eyes of the persons involved in the design process.