2023-2024 Trustee Biographies
At the Annual General Meeting held on Friday November 3, 2023 at 7:00 pm EST, a new Board of Trustees was elected, along with Officers for the 2023-2024 Year. Brief biographies for each Trustee appear below:
President:
Mark B. Trumpour
Mark had a 35 year career in the Ontario Public Service followed by 6 years consulting for the public, not-for-profit sector. He has been a member of the SSEA for over 20 years and a Trustee since 2006. Mark was one of the first executive members of the Toronto Chapter when it was first formed. He has served the Board in various capacities over the years, including Assistant Treasurer, and Vice President, and has led the project “In Search of Ancient Egypt in Canada/À la recherché de l’Égypte Ancienne au Canada” since its inception. Mark is a Departmental Associate with the Egyptian Section of the Royal Ontario Museum’s Department of World Art and Culture. Mark was elected to his second term as President in November 2021.
Vice President:
Gayle Gibson
Gayle Gibson was born and raised in Toronto. She earned degrees in English, Drama and Egyptology from the University of Toronto. In 1990 she began work at the Royal Ontario Museum, where she taught Ancient History, Physical Anthropology, Evolution, World Religions and the role of Museums in the World until her retirement in 2015. Since then, she has been a Departmental Associate in the Egyptian Department at the ROM, as part of a project to catalogue and publish the entire collection. As a longtime member of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities, she served as President for ten years, and as trustee for many years. Since 1999, she has led tours of Egypt in association with the ROM, the Smithsonian Institute, Southern Illinois University, and the Toronto travel company, Your Journey with Anna MacKay. She has written on ancient Egyptian subjects for both popular and scholarly publications, and has spoken on these topics in a wide variety of venues, including the Egyptian Consulate in Montreal, the Egyptian Embassy in Washington D.C. and the National Museum of Sudan in Khartoum.
Treasurer:
Arlette Londes
Arlette was born in Belgium and raised in Belgian Congo. She has been a board member of Alliance Française both in South-Africa and Montreal.
Fascinated with ancient Egypt since childhood, she became a member of SSEA 25 years ago after coming to Canada, and has served as Trustee and National Treasurer since 2006. She was one of the first executive members of the Toronto Chapter, in charge of hospitality for 13 years and of organizing their annual dinner.
Arlette is a board member of AIA/Toronto and the Canadian Society Mesopotamia Studies, as well as bookkeeper of Canadian Society Syriac Studies. Before settling in Canada, she was secretary/bookkeeper of French press news agency AFP (Agence France Presse) in Johannesburg, South Africa, for 15 years, where her duties included office organization, and booking and organizing the working trips for their reporters and visiting reporters.
Chapter Representatives:
Cloé Caron (Montreal Chapter)
Cloé Caron has a doctorate in Egyptology at UQAM , jointly with the Université de Montpellier 3 (France). Funded by the SSHRC, her thesis is a study of the notion of Nu, the primeval instance, within the Pyramid texts and the Coffin texts. She participated four times in the epigraphic mission of the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak. Cloé joined the board of the Montreal Chapter of the SSEA in 2012 and became the president of the Chapter in 2015. Elected to the SSEA’s Board of Trustees in 2015, she has been the French Language Editor of the JSSEA ever since.
Paul English (Calgary Chapter)
Paul English is a retired geologist who lives in Calgary, Alberta.
He first became interested in Ancient Egypt when working in Cairo and joined the SSEA after returning to Canada, over 30 years ago. He has enjoyed studying Egypt through continuing education courses from the universities of Calgary, Exeter, Manchester, and others. He is a member of ARCE, EES and numerous geoscience organizations. He has served as a SSEA Trustee previously and past volunteer experience includes being a director of a major arts organization, serving on executive, planning and budget committees, and as a councillor representing the Canadian members of an international geological association.
Members at Large:
Simone Burger Robin
Simone grew up in New York and originally set out to be an art historian, focusing on European iconography of the early Renaissance and drawing connoisseurship. After changing directions, she obtained her PhD in Egyptian art and archaeology with a minor in Syro-Palestinian archaeology from the Johns Hopkins University in 2002. Subsequently, she has published in the field of New Kingdom and late Ramesside royal statuary, publishing the catalogue on late Ramesside royal statuary in 2019. Since the Spring of 2021, she has been co-editor of the JSSEA alongside Edmund Meltzer and Mary Ann Marazzi. Simone currently lives in Brussels, Belgium, and continues to work on issues of late Ramesside statuary production..
Elaine Crabtree
Elaine Crabtree’s career as a teacher with the Toronto Board of Education spanned 34 years Fascinated with ancient Egypt since childhood, she has been an enthusiastic visitor to Egypt on five occasions. She has been a member of the SSEA/SEEA for 20 years, during which time she has served as a volunteer in support of its activities. Elaine was first elected to the Board of Trustees in October 2019. She has been serving as "recording secretary" since 2020.
Karin Eaton
Karin grew up in South Africa where she graduated from the University of Cape Town with a degree in Psychology. After moving to Toronto, her career focused on community and public arts management. She has served on many volunteer arts boards and committees including the Board of Directors of Harbourfront Centre and the International Festival of Authors. Since retiring to the rural tranquility of Lake Scugog, Ontario, she is shaking up her writing muse. Her travel stories and poetry have been published in several anthologies. Prior to her first trip to Egypt in 2010, Karin joined the SSEA and took courses at the ROM and with SSEA. She has travelled to Egypt four times. Karin is currently working on a collection of poems inspired by the literature, art and architecture of Ancient Egypt.
Stephen Ficalora
Stephen Ficalora completed his Master's in History with a focus on Egyptology and Museum Studies from the University of Memphis in 2013 and Master's in Egyptology from the University of Toronto in 2014. In 2013, he participated in the mission for the Epigraphic Study of the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak. He began his PhD in Egyptology at the University of Toronto in 2017, also joining the board of the SSEA-Toronto Chapter, where he has been a board member ever since. He has served as secretary and VP. Currently, is organizing the digital lectures for the SSEA-Toronto Chapter. Stephen was first elected to the SSEA’s Board of Trustees in November 2020.
Jean Li
Jean Li, PhD, is Associate Professor of History at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Her research focuses on archaeology and gender in the Third Intermediate Period (ca. 1069-664 BCE) in Egypt. Currently, she is Associate Director of the el-Hibeh, Egypt project. She is the author of Women, Gender, and Identity in Third Intermediate Period Egypt: The Theban Case Study (2017), and co-editor of His Good Name: Essays on Identity and Self-Presentation in Ancient Egypt in Honor of Ronald J. Leprohon (2021). Her chapters on the social history of the Third Intermediate Period will appear in the forthcoming volumes of The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (3rd edition) and The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East Volume 4: The Age of Assyria. Jean was elected to the Board in November 2022.
Jackie Jay
Jackie Jay, Ph.D. (2008, University of Chicago), is Professor of History at Eastern Kentucky University. She is the author of Orality and Literacy in the Demotic Tales (Brill, 2016). In addition to her work on ancient Egyptian literature, her current research projects focus on the publication of Demotic ostraca and graffiti and women in the ancient world. Her most recent publication, co-authored with Brian Muhs and Foy Scalf, is The Archive of Thotsutmis, son of Panouphis: Early Ptolemaic Ostraca from Deir el Bahari (O. Edgerton). An Ontario native, she has been a long-time member of the SSEA and a Trustee since November 2012.
Casey Kirkpatrick
Casey L. Kirkpatrick, PhD is a Post-doctoral Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, an Adjunct Research Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Western Ontario, and the Head of Osteology on the BYU Egypt Excavation Project. She holds an MA in Ancient Egyptian Culture from Swansea University, for which she studied the Jebel Sahaba skeletal collection at The British Museum. She also earned a PhD in Bioarchaeology and Archaeology from the University of Western Ontario, where she developed a new method for dental age estimation in ancient Egyptians based on a study of dentition from the Dakhleh Oasis. She has worked on several projects in Egypt, including the Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III, TT16, Fag El-Gamous cemetery, and the Egyptian Museum Database Project. Her research interests include paleopathology, archaeogenetics and dental anthropology. She is also a co-founder and former Executive Director of the Paleo-oncology Research Organization (PRO), which is devoted to the study of cancers in ancient remains. She is director of the Tod Temple Project. Casey was elected a Trustee of the SSEA Trustee in November 2021.
Edmund Meltzer
Edmund S. Meltzer has been an SSEA member since 1972 and got his PhD at the University of Toronto in 1980. He is Co-Editor of the JSSEA, has worked on the Akhenaten Temple Project and has been an ARCE Fellow. He has taught at The Claremont Graduate School (CA) and the Institute for the History of Ancient Civilizations in China, and he currently teaches at the Pacifica Graduate Institute (CA). Dr. Meltzer has written and contributed to many Egyptological publications, including The Edwin Smith Papyrus: Updated Translation of the Trauma Treatise and Modern Medical Commentaries (with Dr. Gonzalo M. Sanchez MD), and The Salakhana Trove: Votive Stelae and Other Objects from Asyut (with Terence DuQuesne et al.). He also loves cats and opera.
Peter Robinson
Peter Robinson is a Geography graduate from Manchester, UK, but who currently lives in Portugal.
Peter became interested in Egyptology as a young child, but after graduating studied archaeology part-time at Manchester University, UK. He then took a part-time course in Egyptology at Manchester University and developed his interest in the Ancient Egyptian afterlife and its landscape. Peter has been a member of the SSEA since 2004, and has attended and presented papers at a number of conferences in Canada and elsewhere. He has published a number of articles on the Egyptian Afterlife and on 'the Manchester Funeral Ostracon'. Peter has participated on excavations in Egypt at Hierakonpolis and in Luxor, as well as in the UK, France and Greece. Peter is currently our webmaster and editor of the Newsletters.
Peter Sheldrick
Dr. Peter Sheldrick (MD) has been a Life Member of the SSEA since 1978 and a Trustee since about 1984. He currently serves as the Chairman of the Research Committee and is looking after the affairs of the Dakhleh Oasis Project. He also serves as Chairman of the Bylaws and Policy Committees and acting Secretary of the Society.
Kei Yamamoto
Kei first joined the SSEA in 2001 and became a Trustee in 2023. Having received PhD in Egyptian archaeology from the University of Toronto (2009), Kei is an experienced archaeologist, art historian, curator, and educator. He has worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he co-curated the exhibition Ancient Egypt Transformed: The Middle Kingdom, and the Grand Egyptian Museum, where he collaborated with Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities in developing the new museum’s permanent galleries.
In addition, the society has the following Honorary Trustees:
Kerry Muhlestein
Kerry received his BS from BYU in psychology with a Hebrew minor. As an undergraduate, he spent time at the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies in the intensive Hebrew program. He received an MA in ancient Near Eastern studies from BYU and his PhD from UCLA in Egyptology, where in his final year he was named the UCLA Affiliates Graduate Student of the Year. He taught courses in Hebrew and Religion part time at BYU and the UVSC extension center, as well as in history at Cal Poly Pomona and UCLA. His first full-time appointment was a joint position in religion and history at BYU–Hawaii. He is the director of the BYU Egypt Excavation Project. He was selected by the Princeton Review in 2012 as one of the best 300 professors in the nation (the top .02% of those considered). He was also a visiting fellow at the University of Oxford for the 2016–17 academic year. He has published six books and over fifty-five peer-reviewed articles and has done over eighty academic presentations. He and his wife, Julianne, are the parents of six children, and together they have lived in Jerusalem while Kerry has taught there on multiple occasions. He has served as the chairman of a national committee for the American Research Center in Egypt and serves on their Research Supporting Member Council. He has also served on a committee for the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities and currently serves on their board of trustees and as a vice president of the organization. He is also a senior fellow of the William F. Albright Institute for Archaeological Research.