We are an international, independent, volunteer collaboration of Egyptologists and scholars working in museums, education, archaeology, and research. We assembled in the summer of 2020 to begin work on the Egyptology State of the Field project.
General inquiries: egyptologystats@gmail.com
*= Current Team Member
+=Founding Team Member
Stacy Davidson * +
Team Lead
History Faculty/Continuing Education Instructor at JCCC
President and co-founding member of ARCE-MO
Stacy Davidson received a BA in History from Illinois State University and an MA in Near Eastern Studies (Egyptology) from the University of Michigan. She teaches credit and non-credit courses at Johnson County Community College. In 2011, she established the Egyptology specialization in the Continuing Education department and has designed and taught over a dozen distinct courses on topics in ancient Egypt and Nubia. She has been recognized as a 2020-2021 JCCC College Scholar for her work on Dark Egypt: Negative Connotations of Egypt in 19th Century American Thought. She has also been awarded a 2020-2021 Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowship and a 2021 NISOD Excellence Award.
Her research interests include: scribal palettes, the History of Egyptology, Egypt/Little Egypt, Illinois, the modern reception of ancient Egypt, and the never-ending pursuit of improving pedagogical resources for teaching and learning Egyptian hieroglyphs/hieratic.
Email: sdavid22@jccc.edu
Anne Austin * +
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Missouri-St. Louis
Dr. Anne Austin received her B.A. in Anthropology from Harvard University, and she earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in the Archaeology program at UCLA. She joined the University of Missouri-St. Louis in 2017 after completing a three-year postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University in the History Department. Her research combines the fields of osteology and Egyptology in order to document medicine and disease in the past. Specifically, she uses data from ancient Egyptian human remains and daily life texts to reconstruct ancient Egyptian health care networks and identify the diseases and illnesses people experienced in the past. While working in Egypt, Anne discovered the only known ancient Egyptian tattoos on a mummy with over 30 different tattoos. Anne’s next research project will focus on the practice of tattooing in ancient Egypt and its potential connections to gender, religion, and medicine. In addition to her interested in Egyptology and osteology, Anne works on improving archaeological data management practices through her participation in an international, collaborative ethnographic research study on archaeological field schools.
Email: austinan@umsl.edu
Emily Cole * +
Adjunct Lecturer in the Writing Program,
NYU Abu Dhabi
Dr. Emily Cole received Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her work as a historian focuses on the interplay between text, image, and object, using a variety of disciplinary approaches to understand how people manipulate the objects and spaces that include written and visual modes of communication. She is currently working on an investigation into the presentation of multilingual inscriptions within their evolving spaces through the Ptolemaic period (ca. 332-30 BCE), and a reexamination of the influence of women patrons on the American field of archaeology through the 20th century. As an archaeologist, Cole draws on her interests in materiality, display, and communication. She is conducting fieldwork at a series of sites in the region to learn more about the means by which smaller settlements were integral to creating a network of larger sites in the Fayyūm. Prior to joining NYU Abu Dhabi, Cole was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, NYU and a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri, University of California, Berkeley, where she curated an exhibition called Object Lessons.
Email: emilycole@g.ucla.edu
Jessica Johnson * +
PhD candidate, UC Berkeley
Jess received her BA in Art History from New York University in 2013 and her MA in Egyptian Art History and Archaeology with a Graduate Certification in Museum Studies from the University of Memphis in 2015-16. Her MA thesis focused on the synecdochical relationship between Gate Guardians and the demon Ammit in New Kingdom Books of the Dead. She is currently a PhD student at UC Berkeley in the Near Eastern Studies department. Jess’s interests include Demonology and narrative constructions within religious texts, tombs, and temple wall decorations. Jess is also interested in the museological well-being of Egyptian collections and their public outreach ability. She has experience working within the museum field for the past ten years in university settings, galleries, artist foundations, and auction houses. She hopes to continue both her Egyptological and Museum Studies passions interchangeably through pursuing a career as a Curator. As a multiracial individual, Jess feels acutely the need to update and diversify the state of the field of Egyptology.
Email: Johnson_jessica@berkeley.edu
Research Website: https://ucberkeley.academia.edu/JessicaJohnson
Sara Orel * +
Professor of Art (Art History) at Truman State University
Sara E. Orel earned her A.B. from Bryn Mawr College, where she majored in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology. Her M.A. and Ph.D. were in Egyptian Archaeology, with minors in Egyptian Language and Cultural Anthropology, at the University of Toronto, where she wrote her thesis on the so-called “middle class” cemetery at Beni Hasan. A specialist in ancient Egyptian pottery, Dr. Orel teaches ancient and medieval art as well as interdisciplinary studies at Truman State University. Her current research is on the multi-period Gebel el-Haridi site near Akhmim, in Upper Egypt.
Email: orel@truman.edu
Kathleen Sheppard * +
Professor of History & Political Science at Missouri S&T
Dr. Kathleen Sheppard earned her PhD in History of Science from the University of Oklahoma. Her teaching focuses mainly on the broad survey of the history of science from the ancient Near East to present day Europe, United States, and Latin America. She has taught surveys on the history of European science and Latin American science, as well as a seminar on women in the history of science. Her research focuses on 19th and 20th century Egyptology and women in the field. Her first book (2013) was a scientific biography of Margaret Alice Murray, the first woman to become a university-trained Egyptologist in Britain. Murray’s career spanned 70 years and over 40 publications. She is also the editor of a collection of letters between Caroline Ransom Williams, the first university-trained American Egyptologist, and James Breasted from the University of Chicago (2018). Sheppard is a contributing editor to the online magazine Lady Science, which focuses on issues that women have faced, and continue to encounter, in the sciences. Currently Sheppard is working on a monograph about hotels in Egypt as sites of knowledge creation in Egyptology during the discipline’s “Golden Age,” around 1880 to 1930.
Email: sheppardka@mst.edu
Jen Thum * +
Assistant Director of Academic Engagement and Assistant Research Curator at the Harvard Art Museums
Dr. Jen Thum received her BA in Anthropology from Barnard College, MPhil in Egyptology from Oxford, and PhD in Archaeology and the Ancient World from Brown University. Jen’s work has included a range of object-based studies in museums and a dissertation on Egyptian royal stelae carved into living-rock features. She has conducted fieldwork in Egypt, Israel, Sudan, Cyprus, and Lebanon. Jen is dedicated to fostering public dialogue about the ancient world and is a member of the Archaeological Institute of America’s Outreach and Education Committee, as well as a frequent participant in Skype a Scientist.
Email: jennifer_thum@harvard.edu
Julia Troche * +
Assistant Professor of History at Missouri State University
Vice President and co-founding member of ARCE-MO
Dr. Julia Troche is an Egyptologist and social historian whose forthcoming monograph with Cornell University Press focuses on how power structures and mortuary culture intersected in Egypt’s Old through Middle Kingdoms (c. 2700-1800 BCE). She received her BA in History from UCLA and her PhD in Egyptology and Assyriology from Brown University. Dr. Troche is deeply invested in education at all levels and seeks to develop pedagogy that encourages challenging content and skill-driven learning, that is also fun and accessible. She has had the opportunity to work as excavator, surveyor and epigraphist at Abydos and Luxor, Egypt and at Petra, Jordan. Her other ongoing research projects focus on examining pedagogies for XR and video games in Egyptology, Augustus in Nubia, funerary cones, education in ancient Egypt, and the many legacies of Imhotep, from man to monster.
Clara Wright * +
Post-Bacc Researcher
Clara Wright is a Hanna Holborn Gray Research Fellow and recent graduate of Bryn Mawr College where she double majored in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology & Classical Cultures and Societies with a research focus in Ptolemaic Egypt. During her undergraduate degree, she studied in the Egyptology programs at the University of Pennsylvania and the American University in Cairo, as well as classics with the Paideia Institute for Humanistic Study in Rome. While at Bryn Mawr, Clara completed a thesis on Cleopatra VII’s political influence on the Isis cult in Italy. Additionally, she co-founded the Bryn Mawr College Egyptology Association and established The Bryn Mawr College Magic Lantern Slide Digitization Project. Clara is passionate about diversifying our understanding of the ancient world to one which includes the narratives of disenfranchised members of societies including women, enslaved people, and the working class. Additionally, she has a strong interest in using the study of the past to empower people today by making information on the ancient world accessible to rural and underprivileged communities.
Email: cmwright@brynmawr.edu
Founding Member: Jason Silvestri, PhD Candidate, UC Berkeley (2020-2021)
Egyptology State of the Field 