After almost six years, the HistoGenes project ‘Integrating Genetic, Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on Eastern Central Europe. 400-900 AD’ (ERC SyG No.856453) is drawing to its close. Its results and impact, as presented and discussed at the final conference (25-27 Feb 2026), go beyond even optimistic expectations. In their keynote lectures, PI Johannes Krause, director at the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology at Leipzig, and cPI Walter Pohl will present their conclusions, sum up the main achievements of the project, and sketch their perspectives for future collaboration between the life sciences and the Humanities in developing a new vision of the distant past.

Programme

Welcome: Christiane Wendehorst (Division President OEAW), Sebastian Schuetze (Rector University of Vienna), Katrin Vohland (GD Natural History Museum), Christina Lutter (Dean Faculty Historical and Cultural Studies/University of Vienna), Claudia Rapp (Director IMAFO)

Johannes Krause, Insights to Early Medieval History from Ancient Human Genomes

Walter Pohl, Decoding the Genome, Telling New Stories: The HistoGenes Journey