Directory
Francesca Ammon
Associate Professor, City and Regional Planning, Graduate Program in Historic Preservation
Specialization • Heritage
Region • Americas
Affiliation • Weitzman School of Design
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Professor Ammon is a cultural historian of 20th century cities and the built environment whose research focuses on the history of urban renewal and revitalization, visual culture, and urban digital humanities.
Madison Auten
Collections Coordinator, Penn Museum
Specialization • Archaeology • Museums
Region • Americas • Global
Affiliation • Penn Museum
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I am interested in Andean archaeology, the life histories of objects and body modification particularly ancient tattooing. The act of marking one’s skin permanently with designs can tell a story about an individual and their culture at specific times in history. Ancient tattooing practices have potential to inform archaeologists on topics of visual communication, status, identity, societal value, knowledge transmission, iconography, as well as therapeutic treatments and life history events.
Jessica Betz Abel
Project Conservator, Penn Museum
Specialization • Conservation • Museums • Heritage
Region • Africa • Americas • Europe • Global
Affiliation • Penn Museum
Jessica is interested in the study of both ancient and modern materials and their modes of deterioration. While at the Penn Museum she has researched and published on inorganic and organic consolidate for ancient Egyptian limestone, and the reconstruction of an ancient Egyptian Palace.
Margaret M. Bruchac
Associate Professor, Anthropology
Coordinator of Native American and Indigenous Studies
Specialization • Archaeology • Museums • Heritage
Region • Americas • Europe
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences
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I have long been committed to critical studies of Indigenous and colonial histories, material culture, archives, museums, and anthropological practice. My current research examines early collaborations among Indigenous informants and anthropological collectors that influenced the distribution and interpretation of cultural heritage in museums.
Tessa De Alarcon
Project Conservator, Penn Museum
Specialization • Archaeology • Conservation • Museums • Heritage
Region • Africa • Americas • Asia • Europe • Global • Middle East • Pacific
Affiliation • Penn Museum
I am interested in improving treatment efficacy as well as the examination on of objects using multi -modal imaging, X-radiography, and microscopy.
Paul M. Farber
Senior Research Scholar, Center for Public Art & Space
Specialization • Museums • Heritage
Region • Americas • Global
Affiliation • Weitzman School of Design
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At Penn, I teach about monuments, maps, cities, and art and justice initiatives. Outside of Penn, I am Director and Co-Founder of Monument Lab, a public art and history studio that cultivates conversations on the past, present, and future of monuments.
Kecia Fong
Lecturer, Graduate Program in Historic Preservation
Specialization • Conservation • Heritage
Region • Africa • Americas • Asia • Europe • Pacific
Affiliation • Weitzman School of Design
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Kecia Fong is a heritage conservation educator and practicing professional who specializes in heritage conservation theory, history, and practice with a research focus on the technical and socio-political dimensions of conservation work in postcolonial societies and the global heritage arena particularly as they intersect issues of civil society, governance, and development.
Peter Gould
Consulting Scholar, Penn Cultural Heritage Center, Penn Museum
Specialization • Archaeology • Museums • Heritage
Region • Americas • Europe
Affiliation • Penn Museum
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My specialization is in the nexus among archaeological and museum practice, organizational management and governance, economic theory, and the manner in which markets and government properly aligned can protect rather than undermine the future of heritage.
Michael C. Henry
Adjunct Professor, Graduate Program in Historic Preservation
Specialization • Conservation • Museums • Heritage
Region • Africa • Americas • Asia • Pacific
Affiliation • Weitzman School of Design
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Diagnostic thinking and sustainable environmental management for preventive conservation of fixed and movable cultural heritage.
Jason T. Herrmann
Lecturer, Anthropology
Teaching Specialist for Digital Archaeology Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials, Penn Museum
Megan C. Kassabaum
Associate Professor, Anthropology
Associate Curator, American Section, Penn Museum
Director, Center for Ancient Studies
Specialization • Archaeology • Museums • Heritage
Region • Americas
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences • Penn Museum
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My research focuses on pre-contact Native American mound sites in the Mississippi River Valley in order to understand the complex relationships that existed between monument construction and identity, as well as foodways and politics through archaeological excavation and analysis of the recovered materials. I have also recently begun a West Philadelphia-based community archaeology project. I am committed to local archaeology and believe that education aimed at populations who interact with archaeology sites as part of their quotidian landscape is key to their protection and to engendering respect for both past and present communities.
Brent Leggs
Adjunct Associate Professor, Graduate Program in Historic Preservation
Senior Advisor, Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites
Specialization • Conservation • Museums • Heritage
Region • Americas • Global
Affiliation • Weitzman School of Design
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Not until Black American contributions in our national history are revered and protected, will our nation revere and protect Black lives and Black humanity. We must elevate and preserve the remarkable stories and places that evoke centuries of BIPOC activism, achievement, and community.
Richard Leventhal
Professor, Anthropology
Curator, American Section, Penn Museum
Executive Director, Penn Cultural Heritage Center, Penn Museum
Specialization • Archaeology • Museums • Heritage
Region • Americas
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences • Penn Museum
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By positioning communities in a leading role, the Penn Cultural Heritage Center reframes the preservation of cultural heritage within a context of social, political, and economic development. We demonstrate and disseminate our strategy through field projects, research, engagement in public policy, and public programs that emphasize the centrality of community priorities for successful outcomes.
Sarah Lopez
Associate Professor in City and Regional Planning
Specialization • Heritage
Region • Americas
Affiliation • Weitzman School of Design
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Sarah Lopez is a built environment historian of 20th century Mexico and the United States whose research focuses on material histories of migration, remittance development and landscapes, and migrant incarceration.
Mark Lycett
Director, South Asia Center
Adjunct Professor, Anthropology
Specialization • Archaeology
Region • Americas • Asia
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences • Penn Museum
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My research focuses on the historical anthropology and social ecology of landscape formation, biodiversity, and power relations in South Asia. I am interested in the interplay of cultural landscapes and forest history; in the relationship between commemoration, social memory; and in the cultural construction of place in southern India. I have also written extensively on the social history and historical ecology of place and landscape in the Spanish Colonial Americas.
Simon Martin
Associate Curator and Keeper, Penn Museum
Adjunct Associate Professor of Anthropology
Specialization • Heritage
Region • Americas
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences • Penn Museum
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The decipherment of Maya hieroglyphic writing offers us a true “window into the past”—one that has revolutionized our understanding of an ancient American people and their political dynamics.
Randall F. Mason
Professor, City & Regional Planning, Graduate Program in Historic Preservation
Faculty Director, Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites
Frank G. Matero
Professor, Architecture and Historic Preservation
Director, The Center for Architectural Conservation
Specialization • Archaeology • Conservation • Heritage
Region • Americas • Europe • Global • Middle East
Affiliation • Weitzman School of Design
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One definition of Preservation is it is the sum total of the ways in which the present maintains living contact with the past. To do that it must be both a physical and a social act. But we should remember it is also a ‘critical act’ in that observation, experience, reflection, and reasoning are essential to its practice.
Katherine M. Moore
Practice Professor, Anthropology
Mainwaring Teaching Specialist, Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials
Alessandro Pezzati
Senior Archivist, Penn Museum
Specialization • Archaeology • Museums
Region • Americas • Global
Affiliation • Penn Museum
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Eduardo Rojas
Lecturer, Graduate Program in Historic Preservation
Specialization • Heritage
Region • Americas • Global
Affiliation • Weitzman School of Design
My research, teaching and professional practice focuses on the governance of the urban heritage preservation process linking the analytical and operational methodologies of historic preservation and urban development planning. My objective is to better understand the social, economic and physical factors contributing to successful urban preservation experiences.
Theodore G. Schurr
Professor, Anthropology
Specialization • Archaeology • Museums • Heritage
Region • Africa • Americas • Asia • Europe • Global • Middle East • Pacific
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences
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Through DNA analysis, we reconstruct the origin and migration history of human populations, linking evidence from the past with present day understandings of ancestry, genealogy, and history.
Lisa J. Servon
Kevin and Erica Penn Presidential Professor and Chair, City and Regional Planning
Specialization • Heritage
Region • Americas
Affiliation • Weitzman School of Design
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I study poverty and inequality, especially as they relate to financial issues and services.
Heather J. Sharkey
Professor, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Specialization • Museums • Heritage
Region • Africa • Americas • Global • Middle East
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences
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With my students, I aim to produce public-facing scholarship that explores the history of the Penn Museum, the University of Pennsylvania, and associated scholars and resources while drawing connections to the United States, the Middle East and North Africa, and the wider world!
Thomas Tartaron
Associate Professor, Classical Studies
Specialization • Archaeology
Region • Americas • Asia • Europe
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences
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My research is about bringing multiple ways of knowing to intriguing questions of the ancient past.
Deborah A. Thomas
R. Jean Brownlee Professor, Anthropology
Director, Center for Experimental Ethnography
Specialization • Heritage
Region • Americas • Global
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences
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My obsessions over the years have had to do with the Caribbean, and with processes of coloniality in the Western hemisphere. For me, the development of different forms of archives (they could be narrative, performative, sonic, or visual), and my practice of assembling them alongside each other, and alongside other already existing (usually difficult) archives, has been geared toward generating difficult conversations about personhood, politics, and violence. Archiving, in this way, is for me a decolonizing practice.
Anne Tiballi
Director, Academic Engagement, Penn Museum
Specialization • Archaeology • Museums
Region • Americas
Affiliation • Penn Museum
Anne is an Andean archaeologist, with special interest in human interactions with technology, craft production and identity, and textile analysis. She also writes on the potential of object-based learning to impact teaching and learning in higher education.
Domenic Vitiello
Associate Professor, City Planning and Urban Studies
Specialization • Heritage
Region • Africa • Americas • Europe • Global
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences • Weitzman School of Design
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Domenic Vitiello is a historian and urban planner whose research, teaching, and practice focus on migrant communities, sanctuary, community development, urban agriculture and community food systems.
Chantel White
Teaching Specialist, Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials, Penn Museum
Adjunct Faculty, Anthropology
Specialization • Archaeology
Region • Americas • Europe • Middle East
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences • Penn Museum
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My research focuses on the tiny discarded items of everyday life – bits of seeds, nut shells, and other plant materials – to reconstruct the foods and beverages that people consumed in the past, and to better understand the specialized knowledge and skillsets of those who produced daily meals.
William Wierzbowski
Keeper of Collections, American Section, Penn Museum
Specialization • Museums
Region • Americas
Affiliation • Penn Museum
My research focuses on the history of collecting Native North American material culture, the traditions of painting among the Plains peoples, and reconstructing historic Two-Spirit histories and imagery.
Amber N. Wiley
Associate Professor in Historic Preservation
Matt and Erica Nord Director Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites (CPCRS)
Specialization • Museums • Heritage
Region • Americas • Global
Affiliation • Weitzman School of Design
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My research interests center on the social aspects of design and how it affects urban communities – architecture as a literal and figural structure of power. I focus on the ways local and national bodies have made the claim for the dominating narrative and collective memory of cities and examines how preservation and public history contribute to the creation and maintenance of the identity and sense of place of a city.
Lucy Fowler Williams
Associate Curator and Jeremy A. Sabloff Keeper, American Collections, Penn Museum
Aaron Wunsch
Associate Professor, Graduate Program in Historic Preservation
Specialization • Heritage
Region • Americas
Affiliation • Weitzman School of Design
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The integrity standard, by default, becomes a standard whereby buildings built by people on the margins aren’t worth saving. If you’re going to take that heritage seriously in the built environment, you may have to reexamine the integrity argument and recalibrate it for what you’re actually trying to preserve.
Tukufu Zuberi
Lasry Family Professor of Race Relations
Professor, Sociology and Africana Studies
Specialization • Museums • Heritage
Region • Africa • Americas • Asia • Europe • Global
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences
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My academic production includes teaching, researching, filmmaking, and curating.