Symposium 2021 Speaker biographies
We are finalising the 2021 SSEA Symposium weekend and will provide the biographies of the weekend's speakers online as they become available. In order of their appearance in the schedule, our speakers are:
James P. Allen is the Charles Edwin Wilbour Professor of Egyptology at Brown University. He has also served as Curator of Egyptian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and President of the International Association of Egyptologists. In this century, he has been one of the leading figures in a re-evaluation of the ancient Egyptian language on its own terms. He is the author of 22 books and 87 articles on ancient Egyptian grammar, literature, religion, and history, including The Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt, catalog of an exhibition he curated at the MMA in 2005.
Gayle Gibson earned degrees in English , Drama and Egyptology at the University of Toronto, ultimately settling in for work on the ancient world. She taught History, World Religions, and Physical Anthropology at the Royal Ontario Museum from 1990 to 2015. Gibson joined the SSEA in the 1980s, serving as President for ten years, and as Trustee for many years. Since 1999 she has been study leader on visits to Egypt for the Smithsonian, Southern Illinois University, the Royal Ontario Museum, and for private companies. She has published both popular and scholarly articles on ancient Egyptian subjects. Gayle has spoken on these topics in a wide variety of venues, has served as consultant for several museum exhibitions, and continues to offer courses and lectures online during the Pandemic.
Edmund Meltzer received his PhD in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Toronto. He worked as a site supervisor on the Akhenaten Temple Project–East Karnak Excavation and as an ARCE Fellow, and has taught at the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill, The Claremont Graduate School, the Institute for the History of Ancient Civilizations in China, and currently at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Edmund is a Board member of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities, and one of the editors of its Journal. His publications include The Edwin Smith Papyrus: Updated Translation of the Trauma Treatise and Modern Medical Commentaries with Dr. Gonzalo Sanchez, MD; contributions in Terence DuQuesne et al., The Salakhana Trove: Votive Stelae and Other Objects from Asyut, A. J. Mills et al., The Cemeteries of Qasr Ibrim, D. B. Redford et al., The Akhenaten Temple Project II, J. E. Goehring et al., The Crosby-Schøyen Codex; and articles in JSSEA and many other journals and edited volumes. He also loves cats and opera.
Dr. Gonzalo M. Sanchez M.D. FAANS., is an American Neurosurgeon, a Fellow of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, Life Member. He received his medical degree from the University of Puebla, Mexico. Neurosurgical Residency, Hospital General del Estado, Madrid, Spain and New York University Medical Center. Practice: Lieutenant Colonel, Chief of Neurosurgery, Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, TX during the Vietnam War followed by private practice in South Dakota with University affiliation. 2015 History of Neurosurgery Award from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons.
Dr Sanchez is listed in the Directory of North American Egyptologists (University of Chicago), with areas of interest in the Neurological aspects of trauma and disease in Ancient Egypt. He is a member and past President of the American Research Center in Egypt, Arizona Chapter and past medical adviser of the U. of Arizona Egyptian Expedition. Along with Dr. Ed Meltzer, he co-authored The Edwin Smith Papyrus, Updated Translation of the Trauma Treatise and Modern Medical Commentaries (2012) with Egyptologist Edmund S. Meltzer. He has authored numerous articles and presented on many other Egyptological topics, including participation in the National Geographic’s 2004 documentary on Thutmosis III, “Egypt’s Warrior King,”.
Jessica Kaiser is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the department of ALM (Archival Science, Library & Information science, and Museum & Heritage studies) at Uppsala University, Sweden. She has been a visiting researcher and lecturer at the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California Berkeley and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Saint Mary’s College of California. She holds an MA in biological anthropology from the University of Stockholm, Sweden, with minors in Classics and Egyptology from Uppsala University (2006) and a PhD in Egyptian Archaeology and Bioarchaeology from University of California Berkeley (2018). Dr. Kaiser has worked extensively as an archaeologist and surveyor in Egypt, California and Scandinavia, and was the head osteologist for the Giza Plateau Mapping Project/Ancient Egypt Research Associates between 2000-2010, and the Johns Hopkins Mut Temple Expedition between 2015-2016. She directed the bioarchaeology concentration of the AERA/ARCE field school between 2005-2010. She has also worked as a field supervisor and surveyor at the at the UC Berkeley Hibeh Expedition (2006-2009 seasons). Since 2017, she is co-directing the Berkeley-sponsored Abydos Temple Paper Archive Project with colleagues from Egypt and Germany. Her research interests include skeletal evidence of stress and disease, mortuary archaeology, the archaeology of childhood, database development for archaeology and osteology, and Egyptology and the colonial encounter.
Paula Veiga is an Egyptologist researching practices of medicine, magic and religious rituals of ancient Egypt and others among Mediterranean and ancient Near East civilizations. Following a personal trip to Egypt in 2002, Paula changed her career path and approached ancient civilizations. She studied Egyptology at the University of Lisboa, Portugal (MA in Pre-Classical Studies, 2008), followed by an MsC in Biomedical and Forensic Techniques for Egyptology, Manchester, UK. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Egyptology at the LMU University of Munich, Germany. Her two Masters’ dissertations have been published: “Oncology and Infectious Diseases in ancient Egypt” focused on the Ebers Papyrus, Treatise on Tumours 857-877; and “Health and Medicine in ancient Egypt: magic and science”.
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.
Dr Roger Forshaw was a dental surgeon in general dental practice for many years before going on to study Egyptology at the Universities of Exeter and Manchester. He is now an honorary lecturer in Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester.
His research interests include dental anthropology, dental care, healing practices, and the Saite Period in ancient Egypt. Among his publications are The Role of the Lector in Ancient Egyptian Society, together with a number of papers on ancient Egyptian healing practices and dental health in ancient Egypt. His latest book Egypt of the Saite Pharaohs, 664-525 BC has just been released in paperback.
Kasia Szpakowska is an Egyptologist focussing on Ancient Egyptian private religious practices, dreams, gender and the archaeology of magic. She earned her PhD at UCLA, and was Associate Professor of Egyptology at Swansea University, Wales until her recent retirement. Along with being a Phi Beta Kappa scholar, she was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (London). Notable scholarly achievements include a Leverhulme Trust Research Grant to direct the Ancient Egyptian Demonology Project: Second Millennium BCE. This involved investigating the role of apotropaic devices and images of supernatural beings as mechanisms for coping with physical and mental health afflictions the Ancient Egyptians believed to have been caused by external demons. Her research has expanded to explore whether “ages of anxiety” can be recognized in the archaeological record through unexpected developments in and production of new types of ritual paraphernalia, iconography and archetypes.
Along with numerous articles, Dr. Szpakowska has authored several monographs on dreams and on daily life, and edited several volumes, including most recently Demon Things: Ancient Egyptian Manifestations of Liminal Entities. She enjoys actively engaging the public through museum events and is patron of the Friends of the Egypt Centre (Swansea, Wales). Her TV work includes National Geographic’s The Egyptian Job and Discovery Kids’ Tutenstein.