In recent years, archaeologists from around the world have marked the centenaries of some of Iraq’s most influential archaeological discoveries.

The excavation of the ancient city of Ur, for example, transformed understanding of early urban life, long-distance trade, royal tombs and burial customs. There has also been a century of research into the Jemdet Nasr period – pivotal in the development of some of the world’s earliest administrative systems and forms of writing.

These milestones are reminders of the profound influence of the archaeology of ancient Mesopotamia. It continues to inspire generations of researchers around the world, including recent work led by the University of Glasgow at the archaeological site of Shakhi Kora in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

This has brought new insights into the nature of the first public institutions, their development and demise. Other surveys in southern Iraq seek to understand long-term human relationships with Iraq’s rapidly disappearing marshlands.

But these milestone celebrations and fresh discoveries also invite reflection about the role of Iraq’s scientists and institutions in this developing story of human civilisation.

Changing the narrative of loss and rescue

International discussions of Iraqi heritage have long been dominated by stories of catastrophe. These range from looting after the 2003 US-led invasion and the destruction wrought by Islamic State, to endangered archaeological sites and emergency efforts to save what remains.

Many of these represent genuine crises. But they also frame Iraqi archaeology as a narrative of loss and rescue, with international institutions as providers of expertise. Local archaeologists are often portrayed as recipients of support, rather than equal partners in shaping future research.

Today, Iraqi archaeologists are still underrepresented in the bodies that decide research priorities and interpretations. Many institutions generating archaeological knowledge about Iraq are disproportionately directed from outside the country.

So, when 20 archaeologists and heritage professionals from Iraq and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq gathered in Glasgow alongside international colleagues in May 2025, they seized the opportunity to shift this narrative. Their discussions ranged from social media misinformation to women’s participation in archaeological fieldwork and the challenges that climate change poses, both to heritage and local communities.

Such conversations often came back to one key question: who gets to decide what archaeology in Iraq should focus on today?

Attempts to decolonise archaeology

Discussions about the future of archaeology often focus on participation: who receives funding, who directs projects, and who is included as a collaborator or author. These questions are important.

But meaningful attempts to decolonise this field of study also need to address how archaeological problems are defined, whose expertise is recognised, and who gets to shape research priorities.

At the Glasgow workshop, Iraqi and Kurdish archaeologists, heritage professionals, government officials and university leaders were asked to identify the issues they regarded as most urgent. Creating space for them to articulate priorities marked an important shift away from externally imposed agendas.

The discussion on gender highlighted a striking contradiction in Iraq. At the University of Al-Qadisiyah in the city of Al Diwaniyah, women account for around 70% of archaeology students – yet only around 2% of Iraqi excavation team members and approximately 15% of academic leaders are women.

This raised the question: is increasing women’s participation just a demographic goal – or will it influence the breadth of knowledge produced through archaeology? For example, a wider range of participants may encourage more archaeological attention to labour, care, social relationships and community life in the ancient past, complementing the traditional focus on kings, temples and powerful states.

Redefining what heritage means

Iraq is among the countries most vulnerable to environmental change. The workshop also highlighted rising temperatures, extreme dust storms, water scarcity, soil salination and environmental degradation, stressing their impact on archaeological sites and the communities who depend on wetlands, springs and marshlands.

It became clear that “heritage” meant more than just preservation. Traditional relationships between communities and landscapes offer valuable lessons for adapting to environmental uncertainty. Archaeology becomes less about recovering the past, more about helping to imagine sustainable futures.

According to Rozhen Mohammed-Amin, president of the Cultural Heritage Organisation in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, one of the most significant achievements was bringing together people who are often “disconnected due to political and institutional divisions”.

Within months of the event, two women were promoted to senior positions at the University of Al-Qadisiyah. Participants also reported stronger engagement between Iraqi universities and the country’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage.

These changes may seem modest – such developments rarely attract headlines in the way of a spectacular discovery or heritage emergency. But they may prove just as important to the future of archaeology – for Iraq and the wider world.

Claudia Glatz received funding from the British Institute for the Study of Iraq, which supported the workshop discussed in this article. Her research and heritage initiatives in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq have been supported by the British Academy, the British Institute for the Study of Iraq, the G.A. Wainwright Fund, the Cultural Protection Fund-British Council, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.

Daniel Calderbank works for the University of Glasgow. He has received funding from the Glasgow Centre for International Development and the British Institute for the Study of Iraq, which supported the workshop discussed in this article. He has also received research funding from the British Academy, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), and the Royal Society of Edinburgh for research and heritage initiatives in Iraq.

Jaafar Jotheri does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Freely available satellite radar imaging is being used for the first time to help track colonies of endangered emperor penguins in Antarctica throughout the winter months.

Typically satellite images need sunlight to be useful, and Antarctica is dark in the winter. This has meant that colonies have been hidden at a critical time in the emperor penguin breeding cycle, when eggs are laid, chicks hatch and adults take part in those iconic huddles.

Almost 70 colonies of emperor penguins, many of which have never been visited by humans, occupy the sea ice that is fastened to the coastline surrounding Antarctica.

Now using synthetic aperture radar (SAR), an instrument operating on satellites that sends microwave pulses down to Earth, and measures how those pulses return, our research team has been able to track what the penguins do during these months.

Unlike other forms of satellite imagery, SAR is not reliant on sunlight, or affected by cloud, and therefore provides radar imagery of Antarctica through the dark polar winter.

SAR’s signal is sensitive to the properties of what it interacts with, and has been used for years in the poles to research things like the properties of sea ice and melt on glaciers.

When looking at SAR images from the free European Space Agency satellite, Sentinel-1, showing the location of an emperor penguin colony during winter, my team started to notice a bright white splodge of pixels moving around against a backdrop of dark, smooth sea ice.

Features like icebergs or rough sea ice can look bright in SAR imagery, but it didn’t make sense for those to be moving around at that time of year, when the sea ice was fixed and stable. Could it be the emperor penguin colony?

We soon found the same thing at the locations of other colonies – clusters of bright moving pixels on stable ice. We were then able to obtain optical images from September when the sunlight first starts returning, and compare them with the SAR, and confirmed it was indeed the colonies we were observing.

Tracking through the whole year

This finding opened up an exciting opportunity to track colonies throughout the whole breeding cycle, by combining SAR images in winter with optical images in spring/summer, and all using freely available data that has been routinely collected for years.

We went back through eight years, from 2017 to 2024, and followed three of the largest colonies year-round. We were able to follow their movement, sometimes even daily from early in the winter until chicks grow their first feathers in December and January.

We observed that colonies were typically less mobile in the winter, before spreading out and moving greater distances in the spring and summer. Interestingly, we found that the Atka Bay colony moved up from the sea ice onto the glacier ice that flows from the continent in seven of the eight years in the early spring. The colony did this despite the sea ice – the typically preferred habitat for the species – being stable. We need more research to understand why this is.

Satellite remote sensing has been a crucial tool for observing the emperor penguins in the summer months since 2009. It was discovered then that colonies could be found in satellite images because of the dark guano stains they leave on the snow and ice. Overall, these observations have revolutionised our understanding of the species and have led to the discovery of many more colonies.

After a period of stability, Antarctic sea ice has declined markedly since 2016 and likely entered a new state, characterised by lower extent and increased instability. Earlier this year, emperor penguins were added to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list and classified as endangered, predominantly due to projected declines in sea ice.

This makes better understanding and monitoring of emperor penguins more important than ever. The ability to observe colonies throughout the breeding cycle using freely available, routinely collected satellite data creates opportunities to better understand their response to changing environmental conditions.

Grant Macdonald receives funding through a Natural Environmental Research Council project. He is a member of the Green Party of England and Wales.