The Broadening Horizons 7 organizing commitee is glad to annouce the Keynote Speakers for the five thematic sessions. While the names are already available in the session page, here are more information for the more curious!
Marcella Frangipane
Prof. Marcella Frangipane is Emeritus Professor at Sapienza University and member of the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome. She has taught Prehistory and Protohistory of the Near and Middle East and Strategies and Methods of Archaeological Research at the Sapienza University of Rome for undergraduate, master and PhD degrees. She is the author of more than 170 publications in international journals and volumes, among which 4 books. She has participated in field research in Mexico, Italy, Egypt and Turkey, becoming field vice-director of the Sapienza excavations at the Late Predynastic site of Maadi (Egypt), and, in 1990, the director of the Italian Archaeological Project in Eastern Anatolia (excavations at Arslantepe-Malatya and Zeytinli Bahçe-Urfa, Turkey). The Arslantepe Project, where Prof. Frangipane has worked since 1976, is the core of her research activity and the main inspiration of her research interests for themes such as the rise and early developments of hierarchical and unequal societies, the rise of centralised economies, bureaucracy, and the State in the ancient Near East, with particular reference to Mesopotamian and Anatolian environments.
Jana Mynářová
Prof. Jana Mynářová is Assyriologist and Egyptologist, Professor of History and Culture of Asia and Africa and the Head of the Institute of Comparative Linguistics at the Charles University in Prague. She received her M.A. in Cuneiform Studies and Egyptology (2000) and Ph.D. in Philology – Languages of Asia and Africa from Charles University (2004). Her research focuses on political, social and economic history of the Near East and Egypt in the second millennium BC with special attention given to documents from the so-called Amarna archive. She is the author and editor of a series of monographs including Language of Amarna – Language of Diplomacy. Perspectives on the Amarna Letters (2007), and the Crossroads series (2011, 2015, 2019). Since 2021 she is a co-editor of the Bulletin of ASOR.
Kristen Hopper
Prof. Kristen Hopper is Assistant Professor on the Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) Project at Durham University in the UK. Since 2018, she has been engaged in the development and delivery of EAMENA- Cultural Protection Fund (CPF) training with national heritage agencies, NGOs, and civil society groups in Lebanon, Iraq (including the KRI), Syria, Jordan, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. She has also been working with the Council for At Risk Academics (Cara) Syria Programme to support Syrian academics displaced during the conflict continue their research. She specialises in GIS and remote sensing techniques in archaeology, and is especially interested in how these methods can be applied to study landscapes of empire, water management in arid landscapes, and for cultural heritage monitoring and protection.
Bettina Bader
Dr. Bettina Bader is the head of the research group Archaeology in Egypt and Sudan (Department of Prehistory and Western Asian and Northeast African Archaeology, formerly OREA) at the Austrian Archaeological Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences since January 2021. She is currently leading the START Project "Beyond Politics: Material Culture in Second Intermediate Period Egypt and Nubia" awarded by the Austrian Science Fund, and head of research group "Material culture in Egypt and Nubia". Over the years her time span of interest expanded to include the time from the First Intermediate Period to the early New Kingdom working on several post-docs at the Universities of Vienna, Cambridge, UK, and again Vienna with prestigious grants awarded by the Austrian National Bank, the European Commission and the Austrian Science Fund.
Federico Zaina
Dr. Federico Zaina is a landscape archaeologist and cultural heritage risk assessment specialist. His geographic focus include the Middle East and Mediterranean regions. Since 2007, he participated in 40 archaeological excavation and survey campaigns in Turkey, Syria and Iraq. He's co-director of the Land of Kufa survey project in Iraq. Since 2015, he covered roles in EU-funded projects regarding the preservation and communication of cultural heritage (HEaT and EDUU) capacity building (WALADU, BANUU). He's currently Project Manager at the Department of Production at the Museo delle Antichità Egizie di Torino.