Staffan von Arbin

Themes Of Special Interest – Management and Protection of Cultural Heritage, Education

Staffan von Arbin, b. 1972, is a Swedish maritime archaeologist and trained commercial diver. Since the late 1990s, he has worked extensively with underwater rescue archaeology and cultural heritage management under water, mainly with the regional Bohusläns museum in Uddevalla. He has directed and participated in a large number of field projects and also carried out numerous desk-based assessments and other studies. Work has mostly been conducted in Swedish waters, both coastal and inland, but he has also participated in various projects abroad, e.g., in Denmark, Germany, Estonia, and, most lately, Greece.

Since the autumn of 2017 Staffan is on leave from his position with the Bohusläns museum, conducting PhD studies in archaeology at the University of Gothenburg where he also is teaching occasionally. The subject of his ongoing thesis work is medieval seafaring and maritime transport geography in the now-Swedish province of Bohuslän, north of Gothenburg. Different shipwreck sites along the Swedish west coast, previously investigated by Staffan, constitute an important source material for this work.

Staffan has participated as an expert in his field in various national committees and reference groups and, in 2003, he was commissioned by the Swedish National Heritage Board to write national guidelines for the underwater cultural heritage management in Sweden. These guidelines were published in 2008 and later revised in 2014. He is also an Advisory Board member for the newly opened Museum of Wrecks/Swedish National Maritime and Transport Museums, Stockholm, and a working member of the Swedish Scientific Diving Committee, which is part of the European Scientific Diving Panel. He is currently involved in research projects in Sweden and Greece.

Staffan holds a full IDSA Level 3 commercial diver certificate (Surface Supplied Offshore Air Diver w/ wetbell, 50 m) and is also approved as a commercial diving supervisor. He also holds the certification of Swedish Scientific Diver – Advanced, which is equivalent to the European Advanced Scientific Diver certification.

Most of Staffan’s scholarly production can be found at https://gu-se.academia.edu/StaffanvonArbin