Welcome to ISAW's First Year Ph.D. Cohort
Jonathan Leite
Johnathan Leite received his B.A. with Honors in Archeology and the Ancient World from Brown University in 2024. There, Jonathan’s Senior thesis, “Identity and Religion on the Numidian Frontier: The Position of Auxilia” grappled with questions of continuities in cultural practice among Roman auxiliary units. In the Fall of 2024, he attended the University of Edinburgh to pursue his MSc in Mediterranean Archaeology, where he examined military spatiality in his master’s thesis.
At ISAW, Johnathan plans to continue to explore the way identity develops in imperial frontier zones across the ancient world. In addition, Jonathan is very interested in working towards ways to increase public outreach in the field, to help improve academic archeology’s reputation amongst the public.
Read Johnathan’s Full Bio Here.
Lauren Malkoun
Lauren Malkoun received her B.A. in Archeology and Italian from the University of Southern California. Following, Lauren completed her Master’s in Mediterranean Archaeology at La Sapienza in Rome, Italy. There, she completed her Master’s thesis as a part of the “Progetto Regio VII” (Professor Paolo Carafa and Professor Maria Teresa D’Alessio.
At ISAW, Lauren aims to expand on her interests in the Eastern Mediterranean, focusing especially on what is now known as “Lebanon” in its Roman period (Syria/Syria-Phoenicia). She will focus primarily on urbanization and landscape archeology, while simultaneously considering material culture, cross-cultural interactions, identity, and manifestations of modernity in the ways we view the past.
Anna Selden
Anna Selden received her B.A. in Art History and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago. Her honors thesis examined body, dress, and gender in the material culture of Western Anatolia from the 7th to 5th centuries BCE. She is particularly interested in how stylistic hybridity results from contact between Lydian, Ionian, Greek, and Achaemenid material culture and impacted figural representations.
At ISAW, Anna intends to focus her research on the body, dress, gender, performance, and cultural exchange in visual traditions in the Iron Age Eastern Mediterranean.