Mohamed Bashir is an archaeologist interested in the study of settlement patterns and ancient urbanisation as a key method for understanding past human activities, the adaptation of societies to the environment, and cultural, economic and political relationships within societies and between cultures. In particular, his research focuses on the Kingdom of Kush (c. 1000 BC - 350 AD) in present-day Sudan as an example of early Iron Age state societies in Africa.
He received his B.A. (2011), M.A. (2015) and PhD. (2018) in archaeology from the University of Khartoum, Sudan.
His dissertation was entitled "Meroitic Urban Centres: a comparative archaeological study between Kedurma and Hamadab." He completed his dissertation under a DAAD regional fellowship and spent six months on research at the Institute of Egyptology and Coptology, University of Münster (Germany, from 1 May to 31 October 2018.
He has extensive fieldwork experience and served as field director for the three main archaeological projects in his department between 2016 and 2021. One project involved the northern environs of ancient Meroe, where he led excavations in Wadi el-Dan north of ancient Meroe, the other as part of the ongoing Mahas Survey project on the 'The Historical Town of Nauri'," and the last at Kedurma, which received funding from various institutions, including the National Geographic Society 2020, the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA) 2021-2022, and the Michela Schiff Giorgini Foundation 2022.
He is currently a full-time visiting research scholar at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University.
His current research focuses on the study of ancient population dynamics and the evolution and shift of burial patterns over time in Nubia. To do this, he combines traditional analytical methods of archaeology with molecular-level analyses, such as ancient DNA analysis, as well as interviews with living people, to gain the fullest possible understanding of the past and present history of this region.