Leszek Gardela is an expert on Scandinavian-Slavic interactions in the Viking Age and leader of a Gerda Henkel Foundation project entitled Slavs in the North: Foreign Elites in Viking Age Scandinavia. With a Habilitation from Ludwig-Maximilians Universität in Munich (2023) and a PhD in Archaeology from the University of Aberdeen (2012), his research encompasses early medieval funerary practices, cult and magic, gender studies, and twentieth-century art.