I’m Monique Skidmore — founder of Take Me To Europe Tours. My journey toward creating a truly distinct Mediterranean archaeology and history tour company began at the very highest levels of university scholarship and international leadership, shaped by a lifelong fascination with how humanity’s past and present are deeply entangled and by a terrible curiosity about the seemingly infinite ways of being human.
After a fulfilling career guiding the intellectual direction of world-class universities and research programs, I established Take Me To Europe Tours to offer a different kind of journey: small-group, premium expeditions that blend anthropological depth with the deep local expertise of Mediterranean archaeologists.
My vision was to offer more than looking at ruins — a lively, evidence-based exploration where ancient and modern Mediterranean worlds meet. Not long lectures (been there), or foreign scholars (done that), just excellent archaeologists passionate about their fieldsites showing us the greatest remains of Europe’s civilizations. And the rest of the time? Let’s pause at beach bars, swim in the Med, and interact with the descendants of these great ancient civilizations as we sample recipes and practices handed down the years, tracing a trajectory from the ancient past to today’s vibrant Mediterranean.
I don’t like tooting my own horn, so it’s been difficult to tell you about my achievements below, but I want you to understand that you’re in safe, knowledgeable, expert hands when you come on tour with us. So here goes!
Born in Canberra, I earned a B.A. (Hons.) and B. Sc. at the Australian National University, followed by an M.A. and a Ph.D. in anthropology at McGill University, Canada. My career has been defined by a passion for understanding resilience, identity, and lived experience of communities facing violent conflict, repression, and fear. As an M.A. student, my fieldwork took me to Cambodia near the Thai border, where I explored how survivors of genocide rebuilt meaning and identity in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge’s genocide —work recognized with the International H.B.M. Murphy Prize in Medical Anthropology.
The most defining (harrowing but rewarding) chapter of my scholarly life has been decades of pioneering fieldwork in Myanmar (Burma). Over numerous fieldwork trips, beginning in the 1990s, I became the first foreign researcher granted unrestricted anthropological fieldwork access since the military takeover of 1988. My immersive research—conducted in urban slums, hospitals, psychiatric, drug rehabilitation, traditional medicine, and maternal and child heath hospital and clinics, monastic communities, with rebel armies in the jungles of eastern Myanmar, and rural villages, and with political activist communities in Mandalay, Yangon, and beyond—provided foundational new perspectives on fear, hope, psychological health, and daily resilience under authoritarian rule. This fieldwork is regarded as globally influential in political and medical anthropology, and in the politics of fear, hope, and authoritarianism, and ties in with my earlier work in Cambodia on the psychological strategies that Southeast Asian populations create to survive terror.
My university leadership begins with tenure at the University of Melbourne, then years as a research professor, and advanced into roles as Dean and Pro Vice-Chancellor International at the University of Canberra, and as a Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President at the Universities of Queensland and Tasmania, My service portfolio extends to executive positions in education associations and humanitarian organizations, as Treasurer and Executive Member of the International Education Association of Australia, and board roles in major research and policy bodies. I am a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and have held governance positions shaping global research and higher education strategy.
Currently, I serve as Honorary Professor at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (Deakin University) while also leading Take Me To Europe Tours and have an active fieldwork project and grant in Myanmar.
You can read more about my academic career on Wikipedia.
My core expertise lies in anthropology and ethnography—immersing myself in contemporary societies and understanding how meaning is forged, lost, and reinvented. Over time, I became captivated by the challenge of reconstructing ancient lives and societies through archaeology and material culture. I am especially passionate about what I think of as the “ethnography of the dead”: discovering the beliefs, rituals, and everyday realities of people long gone, through the built environment, artefacts, tombs, and monuments they left behind: an accretion of memory buried in the landscape.
This dual fascination inspired me to found Take Me To Europe Tours—a company committed to illuminating not just the remains of ancient civilization, but the people, stories, and rituals behind the ruins. Our journeys trace the connections between living Mediterranean traditions and the layered societies of the past, revealing how history continues to shape modern life.
Over three decades, my scholarship has produced a substantial and influential body of work. I have authored, co-edited, or contributed to at least sixteen major scholarly books, monographs, and foundational chapters, including internationally recognized titles such as Karaoke Fascism: Burma and the Politics of Fear, Dictatorship, Disorder, and Decline in Myanmar, and After the Coup: Implications & Responses to Myanmar’s Political and Humanitarian Crises. My chapters appear across core collections covering medical pluralism, engagement, violence, religion, and gender in Asia. My research has been consistently supported by highly competitive national and international awards and grants.
My expertise is regularly sought by leading global news outlets, including the BBC, CNN, ABC, PBS, Newsweek, and Time.
I have been an invited speaker and public commentator on radio and television, and during key transitions and humanitarian crises in Southeast Asia.
