Career
Burgers studied history, archaeology, and prehistory at VU Amsterdam. He earned his PhD in 1998 with the dissertation Constructing Messapian Landscapes: Settlement Dynamics, Social Organisation, and Culture Contact in the Margins of Graeco-Roman Italy, published as part of the Dutch Monographs on Ancient History and Archaeology series. From 2006 to 2013, he worked at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome, serving as its director in the final years. Since 2012, he has returned to VU Amsterdam as a professor.
His research brings together archaeology, history, and spatial planning, with a particular focus on Italy and the Mediterranean world. He serves as the scientific director of the Muro Tenente archaeological landscape park in southern Italy, which forms part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Via Appia. He recently secured a European Union grant through the Marie Curie programme for Heriland, an international PhD training network in heritage planning and spatial design.
The new faculty
Within the new faculty, he aims to build bridges between the humanities and other disciplines. He is committed to fostering social impact, particularly in the areas of inclusiveness, sustainability, and socio-economic equality. To effectively address these challenges, he sees interdisciplinary collaboration as essential.
