Roots of Europe is an interdisciplinary research centre at the University of Copenhagen

University of Copenhagen

The University of Copenhagen is the oldest and largest university and research institution in Denmark. Founded in 1479, it has more than 37,000 students, the majority of whom are female , and more than 7,000 employees. The university has several campuses located in and around Copenhagen, with the...

, focusing on prehistoric Europe

Prehistoric Europe

Prehistoric Europe refers to the prehistorical period of Europe, usually taken to refer to human prehistory since the Lower Paleolithic, but in principle also extending to geological time scale - for which see Geological history of Europe....

. It is headed by Jens Elmegård Rasmussen

Jens Elmegård Rasmussen

Jens Elmegård Rasmussen is associate professor of Indo-European Studies and head of the Roots of Europe research center at the University of Copenhagen. He is an expert on Proto-Indo-European and Indo-European languages in general, especially morphophonemics, but he has also published articles on...

 and involves more than 40 linguists, archaeologists, geneticists and other scholars from universities in Europe and the USA.
The centre was initiated in 2008 and is financed through the University of Copenhagen Programmes of Excellence. It has close ties to the local programme in Indo-European studies

Indo-European studies

Indo-European studies is a field of linguistics dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. Its goal is to amass information about the hypothetical proto-language from which all of these languages are descended, a language dubbed Proto-Indo-European , and its speakers, the...

. It is physically based at the Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics and hosts the departmental collection of Indo-European linguistics handbooks.

Structure and activities

The common research projects are organized from Copenhagen. While the basic working group there mainly concentrates on the linguistic aspects, the external project members deal both with linguistics, religion and mythology, archaeology and genetics. An international advisory board covers all of the basic fields.
Research results emerging from the project are published mainly in the book series Copenhagen Studies in Indo-European

Copenhagen Studies in Indo-European

Copenhagen Studies in Indo-European is an academic book series on Indo-European studies and related subjects.The series was founded in 1999 and is published by Museum Tusculanum Press. Its chief editor is Jens Elmegård Rasmussen.-Volumes:...

.