We are pleased to announce that ESTER – Estimating Eurasia’s Prehistoric Population Based on a Large Number of Records has received a Research of Distinction Award at the Shanghai Archaeology Forum (SAF) 2025.
The Shanghai Archaeology Forum is one of the major international platforms for discussion and exchange in contemporary archaeological research. The Research of Distinction Award recognises projects that contribute to the advancement of the discipline through innovative research questions, methodological approaches, and international relevance.
The award is best understood as recognition of a broader attitude within digital archaeology that ESTER seeks to contribute to and represent: collaborative, shared, and reproducible approaches to large-scale research questions with relevance for contemporary societies. In this sense, ESTER forms part of a wider international initiative driven by many colleagues around the world. Without their sustained commitment to open and reusable research practices, a project of this scope would not be possible.
At the forum, ESTER was presented as an example of a data-integrative and model-based approach to long-term questions in human history. Rather than focusing on specific numerical outcomes, the presentation emphasised the methodological and infrastructural challenges involved in producing large-scale, transparent, and reproducible reconstructions of prehistoric population dynamics.
We take this award as encouragement to continue along this path, pursuing critical, collaborative, and open research in close dialogue with the international archaeological community.