Theodore Burgh

Theodore Burgh is a Professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, in the Department of Philosophy and Religion. He holds his degrees from the University of Arizona (M.A./Ph.D.), Howard University (M.A.), and Hampton University (B.A.).  His research interests are the archaeology of ancient Israel and the Near East, the Hebrew Bible, archaeomusicology (the study of ancient music culture), the reconstruction of Syro-Palestinian and Near Eastern music culture and cataloging musical artifacts, utilization analysis of Syro-Palestinian sacred and secular space, and ethnomusicology.

Mission Statement:

I am truly grateful for the opportunity to continue to serve on the ASOR Board. It is an honor to be a part of ASOR’s distinguished history. It would be a privilege to continue to serve an organization that has provided so much for me.

I have been an active ASOR member since 1996, presenting numerous papers and chairing sessions. I have been a part of the membership committee for nearly fifteen years. On short notice, I also substituted for the 2012-13 Vice-President and chaired the 2012 ASOR Members Meeting.

As a trustee, I will continue to bring commitment and experience. Building on existing success, these are a few areas where I think ASOR could expand its services to the Academy generally and to members specifically. I would like to continue efforts to incorporate technology in ASOR’s development. ASOR is working to strengthen global connections and bringing excavations and archaeological conversations together in exciting new ways. ASOR understands that it is very difficult for some scholars and students in various parts of the world to attend ASOR conferences. However, thus, we have initiated discussions regarding implementing technology that could possibly live streaming or provide recorded lectures and papers delivered from these scholars and students. ASOR will also continue to explore how to possibly share specific lectures and symposiums in the same manner and incorporate Q&A whenever possible. To have top archaeological scholars sharing short clips within articles and reports that can be accessed any time would be invaluable sources.

Lastly, I would like to see continued energy with the membership and outreach committees.  Efforts with such endeavors as Friends of ASOR will be essential to maintaining the organization’s future membership and developing inclusivity.

Thomas Schneider

Thomas Schneider is Professor of Egyptology and Near Eastern Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Since 2012, he has also served ASOR as Editor of Near Eastern Archaeology and ex officio member on the Committee on Publications. He holds a Master’s degree, a doctorate, and a habilitation in Egyptology from the University of Basel. He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Vienna in 1999 and at the University of Heidelberg in 2003-4. From 2001 to 2005, he was a Junior Research Professor of the Swiss National Science Foundation at the University of Basel, and from 2005 to 2007, holder of the Chair in Egyptology at the University of Wales, Swansea. He was a visiting scholar at NYU in 2006, at Berkeley in 2012, and a guest lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 2016. He has widely published on Egyptian interconnections with the Levant and the Near East (including Egypt and the Bible), Egyptian history and  chronology and the history of Egyptology in Nazi Germany. He is founding editor of the Journal of Egyptian History, was the editor-in-chief of “Culture and History of the Ancient Near East” for Brill (2006-2013), and area editor history for the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. 

Mission Statement:

For the past six years, I have had the privilege to experience ASOR from the specific perspective of editor of Near Eastern Archaeology. This perspective has, first and foremost, been an outstanding opportunity: An opportunity to be a creative part of the ASOR community; an opportunity to motivate scholars from across the world to write for NEA, and to disseminate knowledge on the Near East; an opportunity to work with a passionate editorial board and the ASOR leadership. Since my editorship has also coincided with the aggravation of the political and heritage crisis in the Middle East, being NEA editor has also meant to have my finger on the pulse of the time. In the preface I wrote for the June 2015 issue, I discussed Laurent Olivier’s comments about the role archaeology plays as a science not of the past but of the present: The way in which remains have escaped destruction is a direct reflection of how the present came about; the present is the repository of the past’s surviving materiality. The heritage crisis in the Middle East, flagged up in the September 2015 issue of NEA, shows how indispensable it is for ASOR to assume, in the present situation, a political role as an interpreter and guardian of the past’s material memory. In my prospective role as Trustee, I would see it as important to strengthen ASOR and to underscore its eminent political role in preserving that memory. I would also want to support ASOR in its advocacy – with many sister organizations – of the need to educate global society and advance research in history and the humanities.

Joe Greene

Joe Greene, Deputy Director and Curator of the Semitic Museum of Harvard University, received his Ph.D. in archaeology in 1986 at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. He completed eight seasons of fieldwork in Carthage (Tunisia), directing the Carthage Survey from 1980 to 1983. He has been a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow in Jordan, a Fulbright Fellow in Cyprus, and has directed excavations and surveys in both countries. In 1987–88 he directed the USAID Cultural Resource Management Project in Jordan and in 2001–2001 served as a consultant to the Petra National Trust, a Jordanian NGO devoted to the preservation of the archaeological site of Petra. He has been editor of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) Archaeological Reports Series (2003–2008), of the ASOR Annual (2009–2014), and now serves as an editor for Manar al-Athar Publications based at Oxford Univeristy and as a board member for the Friends of Manar al-Athar. His research interests focus on archaeological survey and landscape archaeology of the Mediterranean/Middle East region with emphasis on the first millennium B.C./A.D., on cultural resource management in the Mediterranean/Middle East region, and on museums and the history of museums in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries. Since the 1980s, he has led tours in the Eastern and Western Mediterranean, most recently to Lebanon, Syria and Jordan in 2011, to Turkey and Greece in 2013 and to Central Asia and Iran in 2016. In 2014–2015 he was a member of a Harvard-based consulting museum group working in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Mission Statement:

In my 30-plus years as a member of ASOR, I have enjoyed manifold benefits of that membership. I have attended ASOR’s annual meetings, participated in its affiliated field projects, received its fellowships, served on its committees, edited its publications, and lived and worked at its overseas institutes. In 2015-2017, I served as an ASOR Trustee as the institutional representative for Harvard University. As a returning Trustee, I would, as before, play a role in assuring that these benefits continue to be available to rising generations of students of the ancient Near East.

To that end I believe that ASOR should strengthen its core functions–its publications and its annual meetings–as well as provide ongoing support for research through its fellowships and through the overseas institutes that it created and helped to build in Jerusalem, Amman, and Nicosia. ASOR, through its Committee on Publications, should continue to develop a robust presence in electronic scholarly publication. Through the Committee on Annual Meeting and Program, it should expand the scope and attendance of the annual meeting while helping to expand membership and ensure that this enterprise is self-supporting. ASOR must also find way to make its Committee on Archaeological Policy (CAP) relevant to the contemporary archaeological research environment, both at home and abroad. ASOR must also develop the financial means to support the initiatives of COP, CAMP, and CAP. It should also pursue new initiatives such as a formulation of a policy of professional conduct consistent with ASOR’s Mission and Strategic Plan, the ongoing, Survey on Field Safety, the Initiative on Women in ASOR and the Cultural Heritage Initiative.

Carol Meyers

Carol Meyers was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. She went to Kingston High School, Kingston, Pennsylvania; made her B.A. with honors at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts and her M.A. and Ph.D. at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Mission statement:

As a member of ASOR for many decades, I have seen this organization respond over and over again to many challenges–including economic, political, and technological ones–and come out stronger. I was privileged to be a member of the strategic planning committee that helped reorganize and refocus our energies. The hard work and dedication of its officers, board members, and members has made ASOR stronger than ever. My hopes for the future are that our organization will continue to meet challenges and carry its mission forth in these turbulent times. Our Syria initiative is a good sign that we are in fact doing that