Jodi Magness is a past President of the Archaeological Institute of America and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Since 2002, she has been the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her B.A. in Archaeology and History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and her Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania. For her engaging teaching, Professor Magness won the Archaeological Institute of America’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. Her other honors include a Fulbright Lecturing Award from the United States-Israel Educational Foundation, and fellowships from institutions including the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Professor Magness is the author of numerous scholarly books on the archaeology of the Holy Land. Among them are The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, which won the 2003 Biblical Archaeology Society’s Award for Best Popular Book in Archaeology; The Archaeology of the Early Islamic Settlement in Palestine, which won the Irene Levi-Sala Book Prize; and Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth (Princeton University Press, 2019), which was selected as a finalist for the 2019 National Jewish Book Award. Her most recent book, Jerusalem Through the Ages: From Its Beginnings to the Crusades, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press (spring 2024). Professor Magness’ research focuses on the archaeology of Palestine in the Roman, Byzantine, and early Islamic periods, and Diaspora Judaism in the Roman world. She has participated on more than 20 excavations in Israel and Greece, including co-directing the 1995 excavations in the Roman siege works at Masada. Since 2011, Professor Magness’ excavations at Huqoq in Galilee have been bringing to light a Late Roman synagogue paved with stunning mosaics (www.huqoq.org). She has accompanied five previous AIA tours of Israel since 2016.
Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina
