Nam C. Kim is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the current Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies on its campus. He holds degrees in anthropology (PhD, University of Illinois at Chicago), political science (MA, New York University) and international relations (BA, University of Pennsylvania).
As an anthropological archaeologist, his research deals with early complex societies and the significance of the material past for modern-day stakeholders. He is especially interested in humanity’s global history of organized violence and warfare. Since 2005 he has been conducting archaeological fieldwork in Vietnam at the Co Loa settlement in the Red River Delta. A heavily fortified site located near modern-day Hanoi, Co Loa is connected to Vietnamese legendary accounts and is viewed as an important foundation for Vietnamese culture.
His work has been featured in various podcast interviews and a documentary (on the History Hit website). He has also authored several articles and books. The Origins of Ancient Vietnam (2015) provides a glimpse into the foundations of Vietnamese civilization, as seen through the archaeological record. Emergent Warfare in Our Evolutionary Past (2018, co-authored with Marc Kissel) provides a comprehensive view on the origins of war within the history of humanity. It seeks to answer the questions about how far back in time we can see warfare, and whether or not organized violence is somehow innate within our species.
Professor Akin Ogundiran is the Cardiss Collins Professor of Arts and Sciences, Professor of History, and Affiliate Professor in Anthropology and Black Studies at Northwestern University. He is also the current President of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists and past Editor-in-Chief of African Archaeological Review. He received his PhD from Boston University. His research interests focus on empire, urbanism, class, gender, household formation, and landscape history over the past 2500 years in the Yoruba World (West Africa) and the Black Atlantic, from the Early Iron Age (500 BC–AD 40) to the Early Modern Period (AD 1500-1840). His research has been supported by several institutions, including AIA-NEH, National Humanities Center, National Geographic, Wenner-Gren Foundation, and American Philosophical Society. Professor Ogundiran is the author of several award-winning publications, including Materialities of Ritual in the Black Atlantic (Indiana University Press, 2014), which won Choice’s Outstanding Academic Title in 2015, and The Yoruba: A New History (Indiana University Press, 2020), recipient of the 2022 Vinson Sutlive Book Prize and the 2022 Isaac Oluwole Delano Prize for Yoruba Studies. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and a Member of the Nigerian Academy of Letters. He is one of the AIA Joukowsky lecturers for the 2024/2025 National Lecture Program season.
Dr. Tara Prakash is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Architectural History at the College of Charleston. She received her B.A. from Tulane University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in the History of Art and Archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. She specializes in ancient Egyptian material culture. Her research interests include ethnicity and identity, foreigners in ancient Egypt and foreign interconnections, pain and emotions, and artistic agency. Her recently published book, Ancient Egyptian Prisoner Statues: Fragments of the Late Old Kingdom (Lockwood Press, 2022), is the first comprehensive study on the prisoner statues, a unique series of Egyptian statues that depict kneeling bound foreigners.
Jennifer Ramsay is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the College of Brockport, SUNY; she holds her degrees from Simon Frasier University (Ph.D.), the University of Sheffield (MSc.), and the University of Victoria (B.A.). Her research interests are archaeobotany, subsistence reconstruction, trade patterns, environmental change and land-use patterns. She is Assistant Director and Project Archaeobotanist for the Petra North Ridge Project, and also serves as the Archaeobotanist for an array of other sites including the Legio excavations for the Jezreel Valley Regional Project , the Khirbet Ishkander Project, the Roman Villa at Grace (Sicily), the Huqoq Excavation Project, the Petra Pool and Garden Complex (where she is also the Fieldschool Director), the Tall al-Umayri Project, and the Roman Aqaba Project. Her recent publications include “A Diachronic Look at the Agricultural Economy at the Red Sea Port of Aila: An Archaeobotanical Case for Hinterland Production in Arid Environments” (with S.T. Parker in The Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 376, 2016) and “For the Birds – An Environmental Archaeological Analysis of Byzantine Pigeon Towers at Shivta (Negev Desert, Israel), (co-author, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, October 2016).
Cheryl Ward is Director of the Center for Archaeology and Anthropology, and Associate Professor and Marine Archaeologist with Coastal Carolina University’s Department of History. She holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from Texas A&M University, and an M.S. in Bioarchaeology from the University of London’s Institute of Archaeology. Professor Ward specializes in maritime archaeology, ancient Egyptain ships, and archaeobotany. She has done fieldwork in Turkey (Uluburun and Cilicia), Egypt (Sadana Island, Lisht, Abydos, Wadi Gawasis), and in the Black Sea, Mediterranean, Red Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and Indian Ocean. Her recent publications include “Pharonic ship remains at Mersa/Wadi Gawasis” (International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 39.1, 2010).
