Sanne Houby-Nielsen (born 5 May 1960) is a Danish-Swedish

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

and museum director. After spending five years as director of the Swedish National Museums of World Culture (''Statens museer för världskultur'') in

Gothenburg Gothenburg (; abbreviated Gbg; sv, Göteborg ) is the second-largest city in Sweden, fifth-largest in the Nordic countries, and capital of the Västra Götaland County. It is situated by the Kattegat, on the west coast of Sweden, and has ...

, since February 2015 she has headed Sweden's

Nordic Museum The Nordic Museum ( sv, Nordiska museet) is a museum located on Djurgården, an island in central Stockholm, Sweden, dedicated to the cultural history and ethnography of Sweden from the early modern period (in Swedish history, it is said to be ...

Stockholm Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...

Early life and education

Born in Copenhagen, Houby-Nielsen was brought up partly in the capital and partly on the island of

Falster Falster () is an island in south-eastern Denmark with an area of and 43,398 inhabitants as of 1 January 2010.

. Interested in history while still young, she studied

classical archaeology Classical archaeology is the archaeological investigation of the Mediterranean civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Nineteenth-century archaeologists such as Heinrich Schliemann were drawn to study the societies they had read about i ...

at the University of Copenhagen as well as in Freiburg and Cambridge. In 1992, she earned a doctorate in classical archaeology from the University of Copenhagen. During the course of her studies, Houby-Nielsen spent extended periods in the Mediterranean countries, especially Greece, Cyprus and Tunisia. In the late 1980s, she met her husband-to-be, the Swedish archaeologist Anders Andrén (born 1952). Around that time, she acquired Swedish nationality.

Career

In 1997, Houby-Nielsen was appointed head of the Royal Cast Collection at the

National Gallery of Denmark The National Gallery of Denmark ( da, Statens Museum for Kunst, also known as "SMK", literally State Museum for Art) is the Danish national gallery, located in the centre of Copenhagen. The museum collects, registers, maintains, researches and han ...

in Copenhagen. A couple of years later, she moved to

Lund Lund (, , ) is a city in the southern Swedish provinces of Sweden, province of Scania, across the Øresund, Öresund strait from Copenhagen. The town had 91,940 inhabitants out of a municipal total of 121,510 . It is the seat of Lund Municipali ...

, Sweden, where she was a research assistant until 2000, when she became head of the Mediterranean Museum in

, as well as from 2005 head of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities. In 2010, she was appointed director general for all the national Swedish Museums of World Culture with headquarters at the Museum of World Culture in Gotherburg. Since February 2015 she has headed Sweden's

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Houby-Nielsen, Sanne 1960 births Living people People from Copenhagen Swedish curators Swedish women curators Danish archaeologists Danish women archaeologists Swedish archaeologists Swedish women archaeologists Directors of museums in Sweden Women museum directors Danish curators Danish women curators 20th-century archaeologists 20th-century Danish women writers 21st-century Danish women writers 20th-century Swedish women writers 21st-century Swedish women writers