Kathryn Howley is the Lila Acheson Wallace Assistant Professor of Ancient Egyptian Art and Archaeology at the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University. An art historian and archaeologist, she received her PhD in Egyptology from Brown University and her BA in Classics and Egyptology from the University of Oxford. She is particularly interested in the material culture of intercultural interaction and identity and theoretical approaches drawn from archaeology and anthropology that facilitate creative responses to the fragmented archaeological dataset. She explores these interests mostly through material from first millennium BCE Egypt and Nubia, including directing a fieldwork project at the Amun temple of King Taharqo at Sanam in Sudan.
At ISAW, she will be working on a project on the bodily aesthetics of ancient Egyptian art. The resulting monograph will argue that the proliferation of bodies in ancient Egyptian imagery is central to how it has functioned upon its audience, both ancient and modern, and will explore the ways in which modern body politics have influenced our understanding of ancient Egyptian art. The project has also been supported by a Beinecke Fellowship at the Clark Art Institute in Spring 2023.