Jan Magne Gjerde is a Senior Researcher/research professor at the High North Department of NIKU. He holds a PhD in Archaeology from UiT – The Arctic University of Norway with the dissertation Rock art and Landscapes: studies of Stone Age rock art from northern Fennoscandia (2010).

Gjerde’s main line of research is within rock art with more than 20 years’ experience from northern Europe including Norway, Sweden, Finland and NW-Russia). His research interests include rock art, landscape, stone age, digital documentation, communication and dissemination. Gjerde was the Project Manager of the large Stone Age excavations at Tønsnes.

Gjerde is currently working on the Norwegian Research Council project Stone Age Demographics: multi-scale exploration of population variations and Dynamics (StoneD) (2017-2021) at AHR (Department of Archaeology, History, Religion studies and Theology) at UiT – The Arctic University of Norway. Gjerde’s main focus of the project is demography, settlements, rock art, communication, landscape and seasonality in Alta and the Alta-fjord region.

Gjerde is one of the members in the SARG (Stone Age Research Group) at the Department of Archaeology, History, Religion Studies and Theology at UiT – The Arctic University of Norway.

Adding to extensive fieldwork in Norway, Gjerde has an extensive international network through fieldwork in England, Finland, Russia, Scotland, and Sweden. Gjerde has been a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge (2006) and the University of Helsinki (2014 – 2015).

Recently (2018), Gjerde was awarded the winner of the Brain Power Award 2017 by The Norwegian Association of Researchers – NAR) for his dissemination of rock art and archaeology.

Gjerde has previously worked at The University of Bergen, UiT – The Arctic University of Norway and at The University of Oslo.