Hallie Franks holds a PhD in the History of Art and Architecture from Harvard University, and is an Assistant Professor at NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Her teaching and research interests are in the art and archaeology of Greece, Rome and the ancient Near East, and she is particularly interested in the points of cultural overlap and exchange between the Mediterranean and the East. Her first book, Hunters, Heroes, Kings (American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2012), investigates the ways that the ancient kingdom of Macedonia drew from various cultural traditions in the visual expression of its self-identity. She is co-director of the American Research Center in Sofia's archaeological field school at the ancient Macedonian city of Heraclea Sintica, in partnership with the excavations conducted by the National Institute of Archaeology with a Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (NIAM-BAS) in Sofia.