Directory
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.
Jessica Byler
Project Conservator, Penn Museum
Specialization • Conservation • Museums
Region • Global
Affiliation • Penn Museum
I treat objects from around the world so that they are stable enough for display.
Julia Commander
Alice and Herbert Sachs Egyptian Collections Conservator, Penn Museum
Specialization • Archaeology • Conservation • Museums
Region • Global
Affiliation • Penn Museum
Julia is an archaeological objects conservator currently focusing on monumental Egyptian architecture and stone sculpture.
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.
Molly Gleeson
Schwartz Egyptian Collections Conservator, Penn Museum
Specialization • Conservation • Museums • Heritage
Region • Africa • Global
Affiliation • Penn Museum
The care and conservation of museum collections must incorporate and prioritize people-centered and community-engaged work.
Sarah M. Guérin
Assistant Professor, History of Art
Specialization • Archaeology • Museums
Region • Africa • Europe • Global
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences
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Jason T. Herrmann
Lecturer, Anthropology
Teaching Specialist for Digital Archaeology Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials, Penn Museum
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.
Kenneth R. Lum
Professor, Fine Arts
Specialization • Heritage
Region • Global
Affiliation • Weitzman School of Design
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Questions concerning who has the right to speak are productive in that they ask us to think about the motives behind the construction of categories such as “the community” or “American values.” Such questions are also productive in that they shift the question of who speaks for American art and culture to the question of who is and who is not being listened to.
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.
Patrick McGovern
Scientific Director, Biomolecular Archaeology Project, Penn Museum
Adjunct Professor, Anthropology
Specialization • Archaeology • Conservation • Museums
Region • Global
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences • Penn Museum
Over the past two decades, Patrick McGovern has pioneered the exciting interdisciplinary field of Biomolecular Archaeology which is yielding whole new chapters concerning our human ancestry both physical and cultural, medical practice, and of course what our ancient ancestors were eating and drinking.
Lynn Meskell
Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) Professor, Anthropology, Graduate Program in Historic Preservation and Curator, Penn Museum
Specialization • Archaeology • Conservation • Museums • Heritage
Region • Africa • Asia • Europe • Global • Middle East
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences • Penn Museum • Weitzman School of Design
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I’ve always been drawn to social and political issues, whether in the past or indeed how the past comes to matter in the present. As famously said, the past is never dead. It’s not even past.
Alexis North
Project Conservator, Penn Museum
Specialization • Archaeology • Conservation • Museums
Region • Global
Affiliation • Penn Museum
Alexis specializes in the conservation of archaeological and ethnographic materials, with research interests that currently include the ethics around the preservation of human remains, and identifying novel materials for the storage and display of museum collections.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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
Learn More • Here • Here • Here
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.
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.