Photos by James Kellie
Summer School 2012 - who's who
The Director
Mr Christopher Coleman was for over twenty years a Lecturer in History at University College London, where he remains an Honorary Research Fellow of the department. He founded Bloomsbury Summer School in 1990 and since then it has become the most successful organisation of its kind in the United Kingdom. In association with its sister organisation Bloomsbury Academy (now merged with BSS), it has also made significant financial, and other, contributions to a wide range of research projects in Egyptian archaeology and related subjects. These include expeditions to Hierakonpolis, Zawiyet Sultan, Saqqara, Mo’alla, Abydos, the Abu Tartur plateau, Mendes and royal tombs KV5 and KV39 in the Valley of the Kings; the Centre for Alexandrian Studies; the Amarna Royal Tombs Project; the Amarna Trust; the Theban Mapping Project; the Manchester Egyptian Mummy Project; the Western Sahara Geo-Archaeological Survey; the Griffith Institute in the University of Oxford; the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology; the Rock Art Topographical Survey; and the Palestine Exploration Fund.
The Deputy Director
Lucia Gahlin has directed a number of highly successful courses for BSS, and has played a role in the running of BSS since 1994. She is an Honorary Research Associate in UCL’s Institute of Archaeology. She teaches on-line Egyptology for the University of Exeter, and extra-mural and undergraduate Egyptology for the University of Bristol. She is an accredited NADFAS lecturer, and lectures widely in the UK, and in Egypt on archaeological tours (including for Ancient World Tours and Andante Travels). She has a long-standing association with the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, having worked for many years with the Amarna material. She is also Chair of the Friends of the Petrie Museum, and has worked as Small Finds Registrar for Professor Barry Kemp at Amarna. Her publications include Egypt: Gods, Myths and Religion (Anness, 2001) and chapters in Wilkinson, T. (ed.) The Egyptian World (Routledge, 2007).
Summer School 2012 Course Directors
George Hart graduated with degrees in Classics and Egyptology from University College London and spent over thirty years on the staff of the British Museum, lecturing and running courses on Ancient Egypt. He is a Trustee of the Egypt Exploration Society and is a member of the editorial board of its bulletin Egyptian Archaeology. He has written books on Egyptian religion, mythology and the monuments of the Pyramid Age, and has led tours to Egypt for the British Museum and Swan Hellenic. He has directed many highly successful courses for BSS.
Stephen Harvey (and BSS in Egypt) has been Director of the Ahmose and Tetisheri Project since 1993, excavating the monumental complex of King Ahmose at Abydos, under the aegis of the Pennsylvania-Yale-Institute of Fine Arts, NYU Expedition to Abydos. He is Research Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Stony Brook University, USA. His fieldwork in and around the pyramid complex of Ahmose has provided important new insights into temple architecture and decoration at the outset of Egypt’s New Kingdom. His book on the excavations to date is forthcoming from the Oriental Institute Press, University of Chicago. In addition to extensive fieldwork at Abydos, he has worked in Egypt at Giza and Memphis, as well as on archaeological projects in the United States, Syria (Tell es-Sweyhat), and Turkey (Gordion). He has previously taught at the University of Chicago and the University of Memphis (USA), and has co-curated exhibitions at the Oriental Institute Museum and the Art Museum of the University of Memphis.
Barry Kemp is Emeritus Professor of Egyptology at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge. He has been Field Director at Tell el-Amarna since 1977, pioneering excavations formerly for the Egypt Exploration Society, and now as The Amarna Project supported by the Amarna Trust. He was recently awarded a CBE for services to archaeology, education and international relations. His important publications include Amarna Reports, I-VI (EES, 1984-95)and Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilisation (Routledge, 2nd ed., 2006). His new book, The City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti; Amarna and its People will be available Spring 2012.
José-R. Pérez-Accino is an Egyptologist who specialises in Egyptian literature and texts, and the intellectual world of the ancient Egyptians. He undertakes fieldwork in Egypt at Ehnasya el-Medina (Herakleopolis Magna). He has taught Egyptology at the University of London (Birkbeck and University College), and currently teaches Egyptology at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid where he is the director of the recently founded Seminario Complutense de Egiptología. He has taught many highly acclaimed courses for BSS.
Jan Picton is a Teaching Fellow and Honorary Research Assistant at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology, and lectures widely in Egyptology. She is a member of the University of Liverpool’s Gurob Harem Palace Project. She has contributed to Living Images: Egyptian Funerary Portraits in the Petrie Museum and Unseen Images: Archive Photographs in the Petrie Museum. As Secretary of the Friends of the Petrie Museum she is deeply involved in all the Museum’s activities and last year directed the excellent BSS course Exploring the Petrie Museum.
John Romer (BSS study day) lived and worked in Luxor for over forty years, serving on American and German expeditions and acting as Field Director of The Brooklyn Museum Theban Expedition, which conducted the first physical survey and conservation studies in the Valley of the Kings and the clearance and epigraphic study of the tomb of Ramesses XI. He has also dedicated a great part of his time to archaeological conservation and, as an aid to raising public awareness of the importance and fragility of the past, has made many TV and radio documentaries. His books include The Valley of the Kings, Ancient Lives and The Great Pyramid.
Jonathan Taylor is Curator of Cuneiform Collections in the Department of the Middle East at the British Museum. His PhD thesis was on Old Babylonian school texts and what they tell us about education and literacy in the ancient Near East. He has worked for the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian literature at the University of Oxford, where he translated the Sumerian proverbs. His current research interests include concepts of history in the ancient Near East, and the great Library of Ashurbanipal, King of Assyria (668- c.630 BC).
