Affiliated Faculty
Adam Becker
Associate Professor of Classics and Religious Studies. Interests: Jewish-Christian relations in late antiquity; Syriac language and literature; reception of classical antiquity; critical theories of religion; the missionary encounter in the modern Middle East; comparative approaches to martyrdom.
Brigitte Bedos-Rezak
Professor of History. Interests: Medieval history; France; prescholastic culture and society; sign theory; sigillography, diplomatics, and paleography.
Pam Crabtree
Associate Professor of Anthropology, New York University. Interests: Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, Irish Iron Age, zooarchaeology, environmental archaeology, animal domestication, Natufian settlement and subsistence.
Rafaella Cribiore
Professor of Classics. Interests: Education in the Greek and Roman worlds, literary and semi-literary papyrology, and rhetoric in late antiquity, particularly with respect of the works of the fourth-century sophist Libanius in Antioch, Syria; interests in issues regarding paganism and Christianity in the fourth century.
Daniel Fleming
Ethel and Irvin A Edelman Professor of Hebraic and Judaic Studies. Interests: Assyriology, Hebrew Bible interpretation and cultural history, ancient Syria, Emar, ancient religion, interplay of ancient Near Eastern societies.
Carmela Vircillo Franklin
Professor of Classics, Columbia University. Interests: medieval Latin; grammar and exegesis; theory and practice of translation in the early Middle Ages; the history of the manuscript book; philology and the reception of ancient and medieval texts; Rome, especially its literary culture, from late antiquity to the 12th century.
Fiona Kidd
Co-Program Head, Art and Art History; Assistant Professor of History and Art and Art History. NYU Abu Dhabi. Interests: identity, images and the built environment, craft production, and exchange with specializations in pre-Islamic Central Asian visual art, as well as interactions between mobile, agricultural, and herder populations, which have shaped Central Asia over millennia.
Anne Hrychuk Kontokosta
Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow of Roman Art and Architecture, The Institute of Fine Arts, NYU
Günter H. Kopcke
Avalon Foundation Professor Emeritus in the Humanities, Institute of Fine Arts. Interests: Prehistoric to early classical Greece; circum-Mediterranean studies; Roman and early medieval civilization in Europe north of the Alps.
David Levene
Professor of Classics. Interests: Latin prose literature and Roman religion; publications on Livy, Tacitus, Cicero, Sallust, Polybius, and Latin panegyric; current projects including Cornelius Nepos, Pompeius Trogus, and the Roman imperial cut. Early rabbinic Judaism and the reception of the ancient world in cinema.
Clemente Marconi
James R. McCredie Professor in the History of Greek Art and Archaeology; Director, IFA Excavations at Selinunte; Institute of Fine Arts; University Professor. Interests: Greek art and architecture in archaic and classical periods
Andrew Monson
Associate Professor of Classics. Interests: Ancient history, particularly the Hellenistic kingdoms and the rise of the Roman Empire. Research interests include political economy, the comparative history of early empires, and Greek relations with the Near East. Particular interests are religious associations, temple administration, land tenure, and taxation.
Michael Peachin
Professor of Classics. Interests: Roman Imperial history; Roman law; Latin epigraphy.
Ann Macy Roth
Clinical Associate Professor of Egyptology, Departments of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and Art History. Interests: Art and archaeology of ancient Egypt, particularly the Old Kingdom period; questions of gender and fertility in the context of pharaonic society and religion; and funerary monuments, including their social role, their use-life, and their programs of decoration.
Lawrence Schiffman
Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. Interests: Dead Sea Scrolls; Jewish religious, political, and social history in late antiquity; the history of Jewish law and Talmudic literature.
Hsueh-man Shen
Assistant Professor of Fine Arts. Interests: Art and archaeology of pre-modern China, especially the Tang and Song/Liao transitional periods. Research interests include the interrelationship between funerary and religious practices in pre-modern China, interplay of word and image in the visual culture of East Asia, Art and material culture along the ancient Silk Road.
Mark S. Smith
Mark S. Smith is the Helena Professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis at Princeton Theological Seminary. After obtaining master’s degrees from Catholic University of America, Harvard University, and Yale University, he earned his PhD at Yale. Prior coming to Princeton Seminary, he served as the Skirball Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at New York University, and also taught at Yale and Saint Joseph’s University. A Roman Catholic layman, Smith also served as a visiting professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Kostis Smyrlis
Assistant Professor of History Interests: Byzantine empire, especially the middle and late Byzantine period (10th to 15th century); focus on economic history, the land regime, and the conflict between the Roman tradition and medieval realities; diplomatics and the editing of the documents of Mount Athos; taxation system and finances of the late Byzantine state.
Stephen F. Teiser
D.T. Suzuki Professor in Buddhist Studies and Professor of Religion, Princeton University. Interests: Buddhism and indigenous religious life in Medieval China, studied through manuscripts, stone inscriptions, architecture, and art; Dunhuang and Silk Road Studies
Thelma K. Thomas
Director of Graduate Studies; Associate Professor of Fine Arts; Institute of Fine Arts. Interests: Late Antique and Byzantine art. Visual and material culture of Egypt during Late Antiquity, especially sculpture and textiles; interests in the arts of Nubia and Ethiopia during Late Antiquity, artistic interrelationships along the Nile Valley, across the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, and along trade routes heading farther East; Christian arts of the Medieval Middle East.
Stephen J. Tinney
Clark Research Associate Professor of Assyriology, Associate Curator of the Babylonian Section of the Penn Museum and director of the Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary Project, University of Pennsylania
Katherine Welch
Associate Professor of Fine Arts, Institute of Fine Arts Interests: Art and archaeology of the Roman Empire in the Republican/Hellenistic and early Imperial periods, especially in Italy but also in Asia Minor and Greece. Major interests in architecture, sculpture, painting, and urbanism, particularly in issues of the patronage and viewer reception of art. Publications on Roman spectator buildings, portraiture, wall painting, and the "neighborhoods" of the city of Rome. Current project on The Aesthetics of Roman War.
Rita Wright
Professor Emerita of Anthropology. Interests: Prehistoric archaeology of the Near East and South Asia; state formation and urbanism; Gender studies.