Fiona Kidd

Fiona Kidd completed her Honours degree in Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Melbourne in 1998, and her PhD in Central Asian Archaeology at the University of Sydney in 2005.  Her PhD focused on visual constructions of regional identity through a study of the costume represented on terracotta figurines from the Samarkand region of Sogdiana. Fiona is currently an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Sydney.  Her postdoctoral research focuses on the excavation and analysis of a corpus of wall paintings dated to the late first millennium BCE at the site of Akchakhan-kala in ancient Chorasmia (Uzbekistan).

Since 1999 Fiona has been involved in research and fieldwork projects in Central Asia, including Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Afghanistan.  She is editing (with Sören Stark) the Oxford Handbook of Central Asian Archaeology.  She is also currently establishing a new fieldwork project in the Lower Syr Darya region of Kazakhstan, exploring non-elite perspectives on late Iron Age interactions.  At ISAW Fiona will be investigating cross-cultural exchange relations across Central Asia and surrounding regions through a study of ancient ‘portraiture’, focusing on the recently excavated gallery at Akchakhan-kala.