Emily Booker (1st year PhD Student in the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World)
Emily’s interests lie in cross-cultural contacts in the eastern Mediterranean, including the Levant and Cyprus, during the Late Bronze to Early Iron Age. More specifically, she is interested in the adoption and adaptation of artistic styles, symbolic items, and writing systems and how they relate to both local and international functions.
Sam Caldis (1st year PhD Student in the Ancient History Program in the Departments of History and Classics)
Sam’s interests center on urban life in the later Roman Empire and its neighbors. Within this sphere, he particularly enjoys examining cross-cultural interaction, urban landscapes of power and identity, urban/rural relations, and the micro-economy of daily life.
Alyce de Carteret (3rd year PhD Student in the Department of Anthropology)
Since 2012, she has conducted archaeological research at the Classic Maya site of El Zotz, Peten, Guatemala. Her work focuses on non-elite household groups during the Classic period (ca. 250-900 CE), and she is interested in what the material signatures of domestic practice can reveal about broader sociopolitical processes.
Colleen Donahoe (4th year PhD Candidate in the Ancient History Program in the Departments of History and Classics)
Colleen is a Roman historian who studies social life and cultural exchange in imperial frontier settings. Areas of interest include slavery, gender roles, and civilian-military interaction.
Müge Durusu-Tanrıöver (4th year PhD Candidate in the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World)
Müge’s research is at the confluence of the archaeology of memory and network analysis. She studies Bronze Age Anatolia (modern Turkey), specifically the Hittite Empire, focusing on how different sites, regions and landscapes respond to the links they forge with their pasts and presents within an imperial framework.
Linda Gosner (4th year PhD Candidate in the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World)
Linda is interested in household and settlement archaeology in the Roman provinces. She is currently working on a dissertation examining the impact of mining and metallurgical production on local settlements and labor organization in Roman Iberia.
Yuzhen Guan (4th year PhD Candidate in the Department of Egyptology and Ancient Western Asian Studies)
Yuzhen is interested in early Chinese and Mesopotamian mathematical astronomy and astrology. His dissertation research focuses on the prediction and divination of eclipses in early China.
Mahmoud Samori (1st year PhD Student in the Ancient History Program in the Departments of History and Classics)
Mahmoud’s primary intellectual focus is Roman social and economic history. He takes especial pleasure in the study of ancient geography, Roman Law, Greek imperial literature, and Hellenistic art.
Kerry Sonia (4th year PhD Candidate in the Department of Religious Studies)
Kerry focuses on Israelite family religion, particularly cultic care of the dead, and its relationship to the cultic reforms of eighth- to sixth-century Judah. Her research engages issues such as land ideology, cultic competition, and the construction of social memory.
Catie Steidl (2nd year PhD Student in the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World)
Catie is interested in issues related to women, and gender, as well as individual and group identity in archaeology. Her research focuses on tracing these issues through the lens of cultural contact in pre-Classical Greece and Anatolia.
Julia Troche (5th year PhD Candidate in the Department of Egyptology and Ancient Western Asian Studies)
Julia’s research focuses on ancient Egyptian religion, with particular interest in popular and local religious practices. Her dissertation “Origins of Apotheosis in ancient Egypt” investigates the phenomenon of deification of the dead in the Old through Middle Kingdoms.
Jennifer Thum (2nd year PhD Student in the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World)
Jen is interested in ancient Egyptian letters and documentary texts, and in Carian texts from Egypt. Recently, she has also explored how Egyptian monumental texts describe the spaces where they were inscribed.
Sarah Woodbury (1st year PhD Student in the Department of Religious Studies)
Zackary Wainer (4th year PhD Candidate in the Department of Egyptology and Ancient Western Asian Studies)
Zack is interested in commentary traditions and scholarship in both Mesopotamia and the greater ancient Near East. His dissertation research is focused on the use and reception of the astrological commentary series Sin ina tamartishu in the Neo-Assyrian period.