Anja Ulbrich studied Classical Archaeology, Ancient History and History of European Art at Heidelberg University, Germany, and completed an MPhil in Classics (Greek archaeology) at the University of Cambridge where she encountered and became fascinated with Cypriot archaeology. After her DPhil back in Heidelberg on Cypriot sanctuaries of female deities during the Archaic and Classical periods, she won a research fellowship by the German Research Foundation to study and publish the evidence from an Archaic to Hellenistic sanctuary at Maroni-Vournes in Cyprus, excavated in the 1980s. In 2009, she took up her current post at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.