Jan Driessen, the director of the project, is emeritus professor of Greek archaeology at the UCLouvain where he was head of the Department of Archaeology and Art History till 2009 and vice-head of the research institute INCAL till 2015. He is also Marion Rawson Visiting Scholar at the University of Cincinnati.
He was also director of the Belgian School at Athens between 2012 and 2022. He did his PhD at the KULeuven and was member of the French School at Athens and the British School at Athens. With the first he excavated Quartier Nu at Malia (with Alexandre Farnoux), with the second he excavated at Palaikastro (with Hugh Sackett, J.A. MacGillivray). Jan also excavated at Knossos, Myrtos Pyrgos, Iuktas-Alonaki, Monastiraki and at Maroni on Cyprus, where he also co-directs the Pyla-Kokkinokremos excavations. His research focuses especially on various social aspects of the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean.
At the UCLouvain, he directed the research group Aegean Interdisciplinary Studies (AEGIS) and two ARC projects, the first on the crisis years of the 13th-12th centuries BCE, the second on the impact of the Santorini eruption. At Sissi, he runs around.