Dr. Kiersten Neumann is an art historian, archaeologist, curator, and educator. Her regional and cultural area of expertise is ancient West Asia (Near East), with a focus on Mesopotamia and Persia, as well as connections with Arabia. She is co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East (2022), and she has curated numerous exhibitions, including Joseph Lindon Smith: The Persepolis Paintings (2022), Making Sense of Marbles: Roman Sculpture at the OI (2022–2023), and Artifacts Also Die (2023). Her publications, university courses, and speaking engagements have covered such topics as sensory experience, ritualized practice, and visual culture; museum practice, collecting histories, provenance research, and education and outreach; and cultural heritage management and preservation. She is Curator of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Museum, Research Associate at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, and Lecturer in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago. In 2024 she joined the Board of Trustees of the American Society of Overseas Research. Originally from Vancouver, Canada, she received her B.A. and M.A. from the University of British Columbia and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. She is one of the AIA Kershaw lecturers for the 2024/2025 National Lecture Program season.
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).
Roberta Stewart is a Professor of Classical Studies at Dartmouth College. She holds her degrees from Duke University (PhD), and the University of Michigan (BA), and she attended the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and the American Academy in Rome. Her research interests include Roman coins, Roman priesthood, and Greek and Roman literature. Her current publications include “Gender, Class, and Slavery in Plautus’ Rudens in 1884 St. Louis,’” in Classical Antiquity, and a forthcoming publication “Witnessing and Poetic Receptions of the Experience of War: Homer, Doug Anderson, and Jehanne Dubrow,” In Just Classics, edited by E. Perry and D. Machado (University of Michigan Press). She is the 2024-2025 Metcalf lecturer for the AIA’s National Lecture Program.
Shane Thompson is an Assistant Professor of Bible and the Ancient Near East Program in Religious Studies at North Carolina Wesleyan University. He received his PhD from the Brown University, and holds degrees in Bible Studies and Theological Studies from Brandeis University, Emory University, and the University of Kansas. His research interests include the religions, history, languages, and cultures of ancient Anatolia, Egypt, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. He is a Co-Chair for the ASOR Member Sponsored Program Unit (RELSE/AAR-SE). His current publications include Displays of Cultural Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony in the Late Bronze and Iron Age Levant: The Public Presence of Foreign Powers and Local Resistance (Routledge, 2023) and Power and Identity at the Margins of the Ancient Near East (edited volume, University Press of Colorado, 2023). He is one of the AIA’s 2024-2025 Kershaw lecturers.
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).
Gabriel Wrobel is a Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Anthropology at Michigan State University. He holds his degrees from Indiana University (Ph.D.), and Emory University. He is a bioarchaeologist of the ancient Maya region, particularly in Belize. He is the Director of the Michigan State University Bioarchaeology Laboratory, as well as the Central Belize Archaeological Survey Project, which he has been involved with since 2009. More recently, he has served as the co-director of the Marco Gonzalez Archaeological Project since 2023. His current publications include Mesoamerican Osteobiographies: Revealing the Lives and Deaths of Ancient Individuals (co-edited with Andrea Cucina) (UPF) and he co-authored “Catbirds and Crabholes: The 2023 Field Season at Marco Gonzalez, Belize” (Kratimenos et al.) published in Archaeology International.
Mantha Zarmakoupi is the Morris Russell and Josephine Chidsey Williams Assistant Professor in Roman architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, Department of the History of At. She holds her degrees from St. John’s College at the University of Oxford (DPhil and MSt), and the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University (MA with distinction) and the National Technical University of Athens. Her research interests include ancient art and architecture of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, urban and harbor infrastructure, and how cultural interactions between Romans and Greeks influenced their artistic productions. She is the Director of the study and excavation of the he Bouleuterion and triporticus at Teos (Turkey), as well as the co-director of underwater surveys around Levitha, Kinaros and Maura (central Aegean Sea) and d Delos and Rheneia. Her most current publications, Shaping Roman Landscape: Ecocritical Approaches to Architecture and Wall Painting in Early Imperial Italy (Getty Publications, 2023) received the 2021 David R. Coffin Publication Grant of the Foundation for Landscape Studies.
