Symposium 2023 - Speaker Biographies
The 2023 SSEA Symposium weekend was held from Friday, November 3rd 2023 to Sunday, Nov. 5th
Biographies of speakers at the 2023 Annual Symposium/Colloquium can be found below.
You can also download a booklet of the Agenda, Speaker biographies for the Symposium and abstracts of the Colloquium papers here.
Christelle Alvarez is Assistant Professor of Egyptology and Assyriology at Brown University with a primary focus on ancient Egyptian philology, epigraphy, beliefs and practices, and the socio-historical context of the 3rd millennium BCE. Since 2011, she has been a member of the Mission archéologique franco-suisse de Saqqâra (MafS) and has directed fieldwork at the pyramid of King Qakare Ibi (8th Dynasty, c.2150–2134 BCE) in South Saqqara. Her current work includes the publication of the hieroglyphic ritual texts inscribed on the walls of the burial chamber of king Ibi based on the find of hundreds of new fragments and the reassessment of the architectural structure of the pyramid itself. She also works on a monograph about the development of ritual texts at the end of the third millennium BCE, which aims to provide a holistic view of the texts inscribed in the pyramid of Ibi and explores the tradition of decorating the subterranean areas of pyramids in the Late Old Kingdom.
Miroslav Bárta is a Czech Egyptologist and archaeologist, having studied for his Ph.D. in both Prague and Hamburg (1994–1997). In 2011 he was appointed as director of the Czech excavations in Abusir. He also served as the director of the Czech Institute of Egyptology in Prague and as a vice-rector of the Charles University.
Bárta specializes in the archaeology and history of the third millennium B.C. He has also been largely involved in comparative study of complex civilisations and their dynamics in multidisciplinary perspective.
Bárta has been a frequent lecturer both at home and abroad and he often lectures for Czech companies, international financial institutions and international corporations, but has also presented his work at the OECD in Paris and has given lectures in many other cities. His latest publications are Analysing collapse: the rise and fall of the Old Kingdom (AUC Press 2019) and Seven Laws. How civilisations rise and fall (Jota 2020 in Czech).
Bárta is author of the seven laws of civilisations theory published in 2019 (Bárta, M., and M. Kovář, eds. 2019 Civilisations: Collapse and Regeneration. Addressing the Nature of Change and Transformation in History. Prague: Academia.).
In 2019 he was awarded the Czech Mind Prize, given by the Czech government to the best scientist in the country of the year. In 2023 he was elected foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a member of the American Research Centre in Egypt, member – correspondent of the German Archaeological Institute and a member of New York’s Explorers Club.
Christian Greco has been Director of the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy since 2014. Born in Arzignano (VI) in 1975, he trained mainly in the Netherlands, and is an Egyptologist with vast experience working in museums. He curated many exhibition and curatorial projects in the Netherlands (Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden; Kunsthal, Rotterdam; Teylers Museum, Haarlem), Japan (Okinawa, Fukushima, Takasaki and Okayama museums), Finland (Vapriikki Museum, Tampere), Spain (La Caixa Foundation) and Scotland (National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh). While at the head of the Museo Egizio, he has set up important international collaborations with museums, universities and research institutes all across the world. Greco is also a dedicated teacher. He is currently teaching courses in the material culture of ancient Egypt and museology at the Università di Torino, Pavia, Napoli, the Scuola di Specializzazione in Beni Archeologici of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan and the New York University in Abu Dhabi. Fieldwork is particularly prominent in Greco’s curriculum. For several years, he was a member of the Epigraphic Survey of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago in Luxor. Since 2011 he has been co-director of the Italian-Dutch archeological mission at Saqqara. Greco’s published record includes many scholarly essays and writings for the non-specialist public in several languages. He has also been a keynote speaker at a number of Egyptology and museology international conferences
Ron Leprohon is Professor of Egyptology in the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto, and past Chair of the Department. Ron served as Education Officer and Project Egyptologist for the exhibition of the Treasures of Tutankhamun in Toronto in 1978-79, and has done archaeological work in Egypt for both the Akhenaten Temple Project and the Dakhleh Oasis Project. In 1981 he became the first director of the Canadian Institute in Egypt. The recipient of a University of Toronto Faculty of Arts and Science Outstanding Teaching Award in 2002-2003, he has also published a two-volume study of the funerary stelae in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts as well as The Great Name, a comprehensive study of the three thousand-year history of the titulary of the pharaohs
Paul Nicholson is a professor of archaeology at Cardiff University where he specialises in Egyptian archaeology and early technology. He has excavated in Egypt since 1983, particularly at Amarna, Memphis and Saqqara. His work at Amarna is published as Brilliant Things for Akhenaten (2007) and that at Memphis as Working in Memphis (2013). His most recent work at Saqqara has been The Catacombs of Anubis (2021). He has also edited (with Professor Ian Shaw) and part written Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries (2000). The British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt was also co-written with Professor Shaw (1995/2008). He is currently working on a Leverhulme Funded project Dating the Dead: Chronology and Context at Saqqara’s Sacred Animal Necropolis which aims to better understand the chronology and cults of the Saqqara animal necropolis.
Mark Trumpour is the current President of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities. A member for many years, he has served in the past as Vice President and Assistant Treasurer. Mark has lectured and taught in several places, and has articles printed in both popular and peer-reviewed publications. He has been a lead researcher for the project "In Search of Ancient Egypt in Canada". Mark is also a Departmental Associate at the Royal Ontaro Museum.
Steve Vinson is Professor of Egyptology at Indiana State University - Bloomington in the department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures. He directs the Digital Egyptian Sculpture Project, which aims to produce high-quality, 3D models of Egyptian objects in museum collections; current partner institutions include the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the MC Carlos Museum (Emory University) and the Peabody Museum (Yale University). Along with Rita Lucarelli (University of California - Berkeley) and Joshua Roberson (University of Memphis), he is co-editor of the volume Ancient Egypt, New Technology: The Present and Future of Computer Visualization, Virtual Reality and Other Digital Humaniteis in Egyptology (Harvard Egyptological Studies 17, Brill) which appeared earlier this year; this was the proceedings of the first Ancient Egypt, New Technology conference, held March 29-30, 2019 in Bloomington. Vinson received his PhD in Egyptology from John Hopkins University in 1995. He has written extensively on ancient Egyptian boats, ships and shipping, and on ancoient Egyptian literature.