The IPCAA family would like to give a warm welcome to one of our new members, Sheira Cohen. She has kindly provided the brief bio seen below in order to introduce herself. Welcome!

“I have been hoping to come and study at Michigan since I volunteered at the Gabii Project in 2011 as an undergraduate. I was born in New Zealand to Israeli immigrant parents, and I studied Ancient History and Anthropology at the University of Auckland, graduating with a BA (Honours) in 2012. My work in Auckland focused on mortuary archaeology in central Italy and issues such as urbanisation and identity. I took a year off from study in 2013 and excavated with the Montelabate Project in Italy with a team of British archaeologists. I could not stay away from academia and archaeology, and in 2014 I moved to Australia to undertake a MA in Classics at the University of Sydney. My research looked at spatial cognition in Republican Rome, combining textual evidence with cognitive linguistic theory. I was glad to finally return to Gabii this summer as a member of staff, working in Area D – the Iron Age portion of the site that I was so excited about as an undergraduate.

 I am interested in issues of landscape and spatial patterning and generally in the history of pre-Roman Italy. I am also fascinated with the comparative potential in looking at other societies on the cusp of the ‘historical’ period. My training in both prehistoric anthropological archaeology and Classics left me interested in how an interdisciplinary approach can bring text, theory and material culture together for a more nuanced understanding of the past. I am keen to learn more from the diverse faculty at IPCAA, and all the affiliated programs, to better combine the often estranged fields of history and archaeology and to meld traditional excavation techniques with modern landscapes and computer-based analysis. My fellow students have such a wide range of interests that we all bring different things to our classes, and I have learnt a lot about the ancient world (and what I don’t know about the ancient world) in just the last few weeks.  I am also passionate about increasing gender diversity in academia and wider social justice issues in society. When I’m not reading for class or preparing papers, I like to read science-fiction and whodunits, watch musical theatre, and play board games.”