Associate Professor of Teaching, Anthropology
School of Social Sciences

Archaeology; Middle East; Material Culture; Cultural Heritage; Islam

Fulbright Fellow (Syria)
Phi Beta Kappa, Stanford University

Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Cogut Center for the Humanities, Brown University (2007-2009)

My research focuses on the archaeology and material culture of the Islamic world with particular attention to the ways in which religious traditions shape and are shaped by the lived landscape. I have also begun to work with Arabic manuscripts from Timbuktu with an interest in the ways that vernacular forms of heritage have shaped Muslim approaches and engagements with the past. Currently I am focused on new forms of pedagogy in archaeology and the university campus as an archaeological classroom for field training.

2023 “Flecks of Timbuktu on the Skin: Excavating the unbound aspects of a manuscript collection” in Timbuktu Unbound: Critical Heritage, Islamic Practice, and the Manuscript Traditions of West Africa Heritage Studies in the Muslim World series, Palgrave Macmillan

2021 Preservationist doctrines as theological propositions in secular clothes. Archaeological Dialogues, 28(2), 121–123. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203821000155;

2019 A Tale of Two Façades: Archaeology and the Secularization of an Islamic Past. Material Religion, 15:2, 185-204, doi: 10.1080/17432200.2019.1590005

2017 Spirits of Heritage, Specters of Ruins: Partnering with the Jinn in the Preservation of the Past. Review of Middle East Studies, 51(2), 196-202. doi:10.1017/rms.2017.98

2017 “Heritage Crusades: Saving the Past from the Commons,” International Journal of Islamic Architecture 6: 2, 367-386

2014 “Other Monumental Lessons” for Drawing on Rocks, Gathering by the Water: Archaeological Fieldwork at Rock Reliefs, Sacred Springs, and Other Places, ed. by Ömür Harmansah. Oxbow.

Endangered Archives Program (2016), British Library, ($14000)

Link to this profile
https://faculty.uci.edu/profile/?facultyId=6380

Last updated
11/30/2023