Current and Past Themes and Scholars

A component of Getty Scholars Program at the Villa

Fragmentary silver plate that is very tarnished and has a relief of two seated men facing each other in the center with a globe between them. There is an enthroned figure above them. Behind each man i — Plate with Relief Decoration, 500–600, Byzantine. Silver, 17 11/16 × 11 in. Getty Museum, 83.AM.342

2024/25: Anatolia and the Classical World

The Getty Scholars Program at the Villa will examine relations between the Greek cities of western Asia Minor and Anatolian civilizations from the 2nd millennium to the Roman Imperial period. In the Late Bronze Age, diplomatic ties linked the Hittite and Luwian kingdoms with the Mycenaeans at Miletos. During the 7th and 6th centuries BCE, the eastern Greeks were at the forefront of revolutionary advances in the arts, monumental architecture, poetry, philosophy, history, and the natural sciences. This "Ionian Enlightenment," however, culminated within a dynamic cultural and political setting alongside Phrygia, Lydia, Caria, and Lycia, which had already emerged as regional powers over the previous two centuries. Subject to Persian rule after 547 BCE, Greek and Anatolian communities redefined their own identities until the conquest of Alexander the Great and the advent of Roman rule once again transformed the cultural landscapes of the entire region.

The 2024–2025 Getty Scholars Program at the Villa continues a two-year initiative on the interconnectivities that conditioned relations between Anatolian cultures and the Classical World, and the consequent impact on the wider Mediterranean.

Getty Villa Scholars

Murat Akar is associate professor of Anatolian and Near Eastern archaeology at Hatay Mustafa Kemal University, Turkey and director of Tell Atchana, Alalakh Excavations (Hatay, Turkey). His research areas include architecture, memory, and landscape studies with a focus on the second millennium BC.
Towards Resilient Heritage: Post-Earthquake Response at the Bronze Age Capital City of Tell Atchana, Alalakh (Hatay, Türkiye)
(September–December)

Michele Bianconi is departmental lecturer in classical philology and linguistics in the Faculty of Classics and Faculty of Linguistics, Philology, and Phonetics at the University of Oxford, UK. His field of research, which is part of Indo-European Studies, lies at the intersection between classics, linguistics, and Near Eastern studies.
Greek and the Anatolian Languages: side-by-side across millennia
(January–March)

Deborah Carlson is professor in the Nautical Archaeology Program in the Department of Anthropology at Texas A&M University. Her areas of research include the archaeological excavation of Greek and Roman shipwrecks, as well as texts dealing with ancient Mediterranean seafaring.
Maritime Trade and Economy of Classical Ionia
(April–June)

Jan Paul Crielaard is professor of pre- and protohistorical archaeology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands. He specializes in the Greek Early Iron Age and the Archaic Mediterranean, including social aspects of mobility and connectivity, the construction of identities, early Greek cult and cult places, and the material world of the Homeric epics.
Ionians, Lydians and Carians: Cultural Interactions and Cultural Transfer, ca. 900-500 BC
(January–March)

Lorenzo D’Alfonso is professor of archaeology and history of ancient Western Asia in the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University and also in the Department of Humanities at the University of Pavia, Italy. His research investigates the political and social archaeology of Syria and Anatolia and cross-cultural contacts with groups and political entities in the ancient Mediterranean, ca. 1500-500 BCE.
New Phrygian inscribed ceramics from Niğde Kınık Höyük, South-Central Anatolia, and the question of adoption, use and spread of alphabetic writing in Anatolia during the Middle Iron Age
(January–March)

Erkan Dündar is associate professor in the Department of Archaeology at Akdeniz University, Turkey. His study focuses on pottery, commercial amphorae, and stamps, as well as late Classical to early Hellenistic defense and domestic architecture in ancient Lycia.
Patara and Lycia in the Early Hellenistic Period: A Place in-between in a Time of Transition
(January–March)

Alan Greaves is reader in archaeology in the Department of Archaeology, Classics, and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool, UK. He concentrates on the archaeology of the Archaic Period (c. 850-500 BCE).
Oracles in Archaic Western Anatolia
(April–June)

R. Gül Gürtekin Demir is professor in the Department of Archaeology at Ege University, Turkey. Her research investigates cultural and historical relationships between Lydia and the rest of the ancient Mediterranean world during the Iron Age.
Multidirectional Look at Lydians and Ionians: Perceptions and Misperceptions in a Cultural and Political Environment
(September–December)

Jeremy LaBuff is associate professor in the History Department at Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff. His research examines the Indigenous communities of Anatolia during the Hellenistic Period.
Indigenous Anatolia in the Hellenistic Period
(April–June)

Naoise Mac Sweeney is professor of classical archaeology at the University of Vienna, Austria. She specializes in the history and archaeology of the Iron Age to Classical periods.
Picturing Life in Death: The Clazomenian Sarcophagi
(April–June)

Geoffrey Summers is lecturer at Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Nantes, Mauritius. His research covers the archaeology of the ancient Near East with an emphasis on the later prehistory of Anatolia and the Southern Caucasus.
Middle Iron Age Urban Concepts, Architecture, and Sculpture in Phrygia, Lydia, and the Aegean
(September–December)

Serdar Yalcin is associate professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Macalester College. He specializes in the art and archaeology of ancient Western Asia and eastern Mediterranean, with a special focus on the Bronze and Iron Age cultures of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Anatolia.
From Syria to Ephesos and Beyond: Exploring the Neo-Hittite Impact on the Orientalizing and Archaic Period Temples in Western Anatolia and Ionian Islands
(September–December)

2023/24: Anatolia and the Classical World

Getty Villa Scholars

Mary Bachvarova is the Lindsay and Corinne Stewart Chair in Humanities and Professor of Classical Studies at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. Exploring how descendants of prayers and incantations attested at Hattusa were transmitted to Archaic Greek poets, her research focuses on peer sanctuary interaction from the Aegean Anatolian littoral, sailors’ religious networks, and indigenous Anatolian magic rituals.
Greek Poetry and the Near East
(September–December)

Alain Duplouy is Associate Professor of Greek Archaeology at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France. He will investigate luxury as a behavior in the cities of the Greek East, specifically exploring concepts of luxury, which were viewed either as strongly negative or were highly valued in East Greek society.
Ex Oriente luxus ? The politics of habrosunē. A behavioral approach to archaic Asia Minor
(April–June)

Elspeth Dusinberre is Professor of Distinction in Classics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her project will investigate the elite quarter of the Phrygian capital at Gordion around 800 BCE, seeking to understand how the community lived and negotiated power, and how interconnectivities with Greece affected sociocultural expressions.
Early Phrygian Gordion and the Classical World ca. 800 BCE
(January–March)

Amanda Herring is Associate Professor of Art History at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. During her residency, she will consider depictions of Greek heroes, notably Herakles, Bellerophon, and Ariadne, in the art of Hellenistic and Roman Anatolia and consider how heroes were transformed from tools of conquest to loci of local identity and cult to serve the populations of Anatolia.
Anatolizing Greek Heroes in Hellenistic and Roman Anatolia
(September–December)

Hazar Kaba is Associate Professor of Archaeology at Sinop University, Turkey. Based on the architecture and material assemblages from three fourth-century BCE houses in the colony of Sinope, his project will trace the development of Ionian culture and its connections with the wider Greek world.
Late Fourth-Century BCE Houses From Sinope as Mediums to Understand the Ionian Culture Within a Wider Geographic Context
(January–March)

Hilmar Klinkott is Professor of Ancient History in the Institut für Klassische Altertumskunde at Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel in Germany. His research will evaluate how the Achaemenid empire may have triggered the processes of cultural and political integration in the Anatolian region.
Anatolian Local Identities under Achaemenid Rule
(April–June)

Sarah Madole Lewis is Associate Professor of Art History at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY, in New York. Her research at the Getty Villa advances a larger book project on the funerary landscapes of the Roman East and in particular, how sarcophagi offer a glimpse into the distinctive aesthetic and social values expressed in the region.
Sarcophagi as Markers of Identity in their Local Contexts in Roman Anatolia
(January–March)

Kathryn R. Morgan is Assistant Professor of Classical Studies at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Her research centers on disentangling the afterlife of Gordian and the Phrygians in Classical literature from the actual lived experience of the citadel at the time of its destruction by fire in the ninth century BCE, as a case study in the processes and practices of ancient state formation.
Beyond Midas: Towards a Postcolonial Archaeology of Phrygia
(September–December)

Felipe Rojas is Associate Professor of Archaeology at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Through the lenses of history, archaeology, and anthropology, he will analyze the performances of dance and acrobatics that were undertaken to maintain, transmit, and manipulate historical narratives in Anatolia during the first millennium BCE.
Kinesthetic Histories in Ancient Anatolia
(April–June)

Andreas Schachner is Senior Researcher at the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut in Istanbul, Turkey. His research project explores the socio-cultural and socio-economic reasons for the replacement of irregularly structured edifices with modular public buildings as the Hittite Kingdom was established around 1650 BCE.
Modular Architecture in the Bronze and Iron Ages of Anatolia: The Cases of Boğazköy/Hattusha , Göllüdağ, and Kerkenes Dağı
(January–March)

Willemijn Waal is Lecturer at Universiteit Leiden in the Netherlands. She will conduct an interdisciplinary study of early Greek and Hittite epics, with the aim of challenging the current paradigm holding that the Iliad and Odyssey are the product of a strictly oral tradition. Her research explores the Late Bronze Age mixture of oral and written traditions that shaped Homeric epic.
Oral or Aural? Ancient Greek Epic from an Anatolian Perspective
(September–December)

Museum Scholar

George Plattner is the Director of the Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the Ephesos Museum in Vienna, Austria. While at the Getty Villa, his research will analyze the architectural history of the Great Theater at Ephesos, focusing primarily on the architecture of the stage building and the frieze with hunting Erotes.
The scaenae frons of the Ephesian Theatre
(April–June)

2022/23: Phoenicians, Philistines, and Canaanites: The Levant and the Classical World

For a third year, the 2022/2023 term of the Getty Scholars Program at the Villa will focus on the ancient cultures of the Levant and their relations with the classical world. Lying on the eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean, the Levant was a crucial crossroads between the classical world of Greece and Rome and the kingdoms of the Near East. Home to the ancient peoples of Phoenicia, Ugarit, Canaan, Philistia, Jordan, Israel, and Judah, this region participated in a vibrant Bronze-Age network of trade that flourished for many centuries until a combination of warfare, migration and famine around 1200 BCE destroyed these palace societies.

In the first millennium BCE, a Greek-Phoenician rivalry for control of colonies and seaborne trade routes as far west as Spain caused considerable conflict but also bore fruit in the diffusion of alphabetic scripts and cross-influences in literature, mythology, and the arts. The conquest of the Levant by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE and its absorption into Rome in the first century BCE resulted in Greco-Roman style becoming the public face of institutional culture and Greek vying with Aramaic as the vernacular language. Rome, too, was transformed by the encounter, especially through its conflicts with Judaism and the early followers of Christ, which had tumultuous consequences for the Holy Land and the Western world.

Getty Villa Scholars

Julien Chanteau is an archaeologist at the Louvre Museum, Paris. His research focuses on the archaeology and history of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East.
The First Results of the Newly Discovered Middle Bronze Age Necropolis in Byblos
(January–March)

Ahmed El Ferjaoui is a researcher and teaching staff at the National Heritage Institute, Tunisia. His research focuses on Phoenician and Punic studies, as well as Libyan antiquities.
A New Temple in Zama Regia (Tunisia): Identification of Its Typology and Deity before Its Romanization
(January–March)

Giuseppe Garbati is a researcher in the Institute of Heritage Science (ISPC) at the Italian National Research Council (CNR), Italy. His research focuses on Phoenician and Punic archeology, the history of the ancient Mediterranean, ancient religion, and cultural identity.
Gods and Culture: Forms of Social Expression through the Cults and Divine Morphologies in Phoenician Context
(April–June)

Mireia López-Bertran is associate professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Valencia, Spain. Her research focuses on Phoenician and Punic sites of the ancient Mediterranean, with interests in embodiment, rituals, and gender.
Phoenician Artworks and Sensoriality
(April–June)

José Luis López-Castro is professor of ancient history at the Universidad of Almería, Spain. His research addresses the globalization of the Mediterranean basin in the early 1st millennium BCE.
The Origins and Development of Phoenician Colonization in the West
(January–March)

Eleftheria Pappa is an independent scholar affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. Her research focuses on the archaeology of the Iron Age Mediterranean and Near East.
Exporting Cultural Landscapes from the Near East to the Atlantic: The Role of the Phoenician Sanctuaries Overseas and the Greek-Phoenician Syncretism of Cults
(September–December)

2021/22: Phoenicians, Philistines, and Canaanites: The Levant and the Classical World

For a second year, the 2021/2022 term of the Getty Scholars Program at the Villa will focus on the ancient cultures of the Levant and their relations with the classical world. Lying on the eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean, the Levant was a crucial crossroads between the classical world of Greece and Rome and the kingdoms of the Near East. Home to the ancient peoples of Phoenicia, Ugarit, Canaan, Philistia, Jordan, Israel, and Judah, this region participated in a vibrant Bronze-Age network of trade that flourished for many centuries until a combination of warfare, migration and famine around 1200 BCE destroyed these palace societies.

Getty Villa Scholars

Giorgos Bourogiannis is a postdoctoral researcher at the National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens, Greece. His research focuses on Phoenician, Punic, and Greek archaeology, as well as trade networks and contacts from the Late Bronze to Early Iron Age in the Mediterranean.
Phoenician, Punic and Greek Interaction between the Sixth and Fourth Centuries BCE: Views from East and West
(January–April)

Eric Cline is Professor of Classics and Anthropology at George Washington University, Washington, DC. His research focuses on the archaeology and history of the ancient Near East during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age.
After 1177: The Rebirth of Civilization
(September–December)

Helen Dixon is Assistant Professor of History at East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina. Her research centers on Phoenician history and religion, with a particular focus on mortuary practice and social identities.
Translating for the Gods: Phoenician Sacred Space between Greece and Persia
(January–April)

Brien Garnand is Assistant Professor of Classics at Howard University, Washington DC. His research encompasses the history, archaeology, and literature of the ancient Mediterranean, especially Phoenician colonies in the Central Mediterranean.
At the Margins: The Maintenance of Ethnic Boundaries between Phoenicians and Greeks
(September–December)

Brett Kaufman is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on cultural history and anthropological archaeology of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East.
Iron Age Phoenician Political Economy: Democracy, Diplomacy, and Destruction at Tyre and Carthage
(April–June)

Susan "Becky" Martin is Associate Professor of Archaeology and the History of Art & Architecture at Boston University, Massachusetts. Her research focuses on Greek and Phoenician art and archaeology.
The Forging of Dōros: Greek Myth and Coin Imagery from a Phoenician Port
(January–April)

Hanan Mullins is Associate Professor in the Arts and Archeology department at Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon. Her research focuses on Near Eastern art and archaeology, particularly Lebanese archaeology.
Ethnogenesis of Phoenician Material Culture: Transmission Mechanisms of Canaanite "Savoir-Faire"
(January–April)

Jessica Nitschke is a research associate in the Department of Ancient Studies at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Her research focuses on Phoenician art and archaeology, with particular emphasis on the built environment.
Phoenician Archaeology and the Museum: Display and Reception of the "Greek" Sculpture from Sidon
(September–December)

Adriano Orsingher is a postdoctoral fellow at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain. His research focuses on Phoenician and Punic archaeology.
Beyond Theatre. Performance, Age and Gender in Phoenician and Punic Masks
(April–June)

Gary Rendsburg is the Blanche and Irving Laurie Chair in Jewish History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. His research focuses on Semitic languages and ancient Near Eastern literature.
The Spread of Phoenician Writing Culture to Ancient Greece
(April–June)

2020/21: Phoenicians, Philistines, and Canaanites: The Levant and the Classical World

The Getty Scholars Program at the Villa for the 2020/2021 term will focus on the ancient cultures of the Levant and their relations with the classical world. Lying on the eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean, the Levant was a crucial crossroads between the classical world of Greece and Rome and the kingdoms of the Near East. Home to the ancient peoples of Phoenicia, Ugarit, Canaan, Philistia, Jordan, Israel, and Judah, this region participated in a vibrant Bronze-Age network of trade that flourished for many centuries until a combination of warfare, migration and famine around 1200 BCE destroyed these palace societies.

Getty Villa Scholars

Aaron Burke is Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures and the Kershaw Chair of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on the archaeology of Ancient Israel and the Levant.
Foreign Fighters in the Levant during the Late Iron Age: Mercenaries and Cultural Exchange
(September–December)

Denise Demetriou is Associate Professor and the Gerry and Jeannie Ranglas Chair in Ancient Greek History at the University of California, San Diego. Her research focuses on cross-cultural interactions within the ancient Greek world.
Phoenicians among Others: How Migration and Mobility Transformed the Ancient Mediterranean
(January–April)

Tamar Hodos is Reader in Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Bristol, England. Her research focuses on archaeology of the Mediterranean during the Iron Age.
Globalizing Luxuries during the Mediterranean's Iron Age
(September–December)

2019/20: The Classical World in Context: Thrace

The Getty Scholars Program at the Villa for the 2019/2020 term will consider the ancient culture of Thrace, in particular its relations to its southern neighbor Greece and, in a later period, Rome. The Thracians feature prominently in Greek history and are well attested in literature, art, and archaeology. No doubt interacting already in the Bronze Age, Thracians had particularly close relations with the Greek colonists who settled along the Black Sea coast in the seventh century BC, including those who took an interest in the gold and silver mines in Thracian territory. Although adversaries during the Persian Wars, Thracians were later employed as soldiers to fight beside the Athenians and became a familiar sight in Greece. The Odrysian kingdom united the various Thracian tribes in the mid-fifth century BC and survived into the first century AD. The rich archaeological remains of Thrace, including royal burials with superb gold, silver, and bronze works, attest to the sophistication of the culture, which combined local, Greek, and Persian elements. In turn, Thracian religion, including Orphic beliefs and the worship of the goddess Bendis, had a profound influence in Greece.

Getty Villa Scholars

Zosia Archibald is Senior Lecturer in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Liverpool, England. Her research focuses on classical archaeology of southern Europe and the Aegean.
Orphic Echoes: Divine, Human, and Animal Interactions in Ancient Thrace
(April–June)

Amalia Avramidou is Assistant Professor of Classical Archaeology at the Democritus University of Thrace, Komotini, Greece. Her research focuses on cultural exchanges and appropriations of Thrace.
Greek Theater and Ancient Thrace: An Overview of the Archaeology, Iconography and Literature
(April–June)

Joe Manning is the William K. and Marilyn M. Simpson Professor of Classics and History at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. His research centers on the economic and legal history of the Hellenistic world and on social and cultural responses to climate change.
Volcanoes, Nile Variability and the Course of Egyptian History
(April–June)

Dimitris Matsas is an independent scholar based in Komotini, Greece. His research focuses on Greek-Thracian cult relations, particularly in the area of Ismaros.
Thracians and Greeks in Thrace and Samothrace: Aspects of Cult
(April–June)

Emil Nankov is Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Archaeology with Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia, Bulgaria. His research centers on the effects of military mobility on local political and cultural landscapes.
Within a Throw's Reach: Sling Bullet Messages of Shared Pasts
(January–March)

Ivo Topalilov is Associate Professor of Classical Archaeology at Shumen University, Bulgaria. His research focuses on ancient propaganda during the 2nd century.
The Foundation Myth as a Source for the Ethnicity of the Intellectual Elite in Roman Thrace
(January–March)

Despoina Tsiafaki is Classical Archaeologist and Director of Research at the Athena Research and Innovation Center in Information, Communication and Knowledge Technologies, Marousi, Greece. Her archaeological research centers on ancient Greece, Thrace and the North Aegean area.
Greeks and Myths Travel to Thrace
(January–March)

Julia Tzvetkova is Assistant Professor of Ancient History at Sofia University, "St. Kliment Ohridski," Bulgaria. Her research focuses on the historical geography of ancient Thrace and ancient settlement patterns.
The Hemidrachms of the Thracian Chersonese: Iconography, Design and Interpretation
(September–December)

Predoctoral Fellow

Matthew Schueller is a PhD candidate in the Department of Classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Public Entertainment Venues as Urban Network Actors in Roman Macedonia and Thrace
(September–June)

2018/19: The Classical World in Context: Persia

For a second year, the 2018/2019 term of the Getty Scholars Program at the Villa will address the political, intellectual, religious, and artistic relations between Persia, Greece, and Rome from the ninth century BC to AD 651. The Greeks viewed the Persian Empire, which reached from the borders of Greece to India, as a vastly wealthy and powerful rival and often as an existential threat. When the Macedonian king Alexander the Great finally defeated the Persians in 331 BC, Greek culture spread throughout the Near East, but native dynasties—first the Parthian (247 BC–AD 224) and then the Sasanian (AD 224–651)—soon reestablished themselves. The rise of the Roman Empire as a world power quickly brought it, too, into conflict with Persia, despite the common trade that flowed through their territories.

Getty Villa Scholars

Matthew Canepa is Professor of Art History and Archaeology at the University of California, Irvine. He specializes in ancient Iranian art and archaeology.
The Iranian Royal Image and the Transformation of Eurasia's Visual Cultures of Power
(January–March)

Zsuzsanna Gulácsi is Professor of Art History and Comparative Cultural Studies at Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff. Her research focuses on late antique Mesopotamia.
Dura from the East: Iranian Impact on the Formation of Religious Arts Across the Trade Routes of the Asian Continent during the 3rd–6th centuries CE
(April–June)

Stefan Hauser is Professor of Archaeology and Ancient Mediterranean Culture at the Universität Konstanz, Germany. He specializes in Near/Middle Eastern Archaeology.
Plurality, Segregation and Integration: Transformations of Religious Systems in the Arsacid Period
(January–March)

Mogens Larsen is Professor Emeritus of Assyriology at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His research centers on archaeology and Assyriology.
The Development of Neo-Assyrian Palatial Art, ca. 850–620 BC
(September–March)

Kathleen Lynch is Professor of Classics at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio. Her research focuses on Greek pottery from archaeological contexts.
Athenian Pottery in the Achaemenid Empire
(April–June)

Margaret Root is Professor and Curator Emerita of Near Eastern and Classical Art and Archaeology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She specializes in the ancient Near East and Greece.
Persia and the Parthenon
(January–March)

Jason Schlude is Associate Professor of Classics at the College of St. Benedict (St. Joseph) and St. John's University (Collegeville), Minnesota. He specializes in history and archaeology of the Near East in the Roman period.
The Parthian Palimpsest: Arsacids, Romans, and the Politics of the Ancient Middle East
(April–June)

Henner von Hesberg is former Director of the German Archaeological Institute, Berlin. His research focuses on archaeology of Greek cities in the Western Mediterranean.
Architectural Models and Small Terracotta Altars in Selinunt (Sicily) as Evidence in the Archaic Period (6th cent. BC)
(September–December)

Antigoni Zournatzi is Director of Research at the National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens, Greece. Her research focuses on Greco-Persian and Archaemenid studies.
The King's Peoples and Lands: The Apadana Reliefs, Herodotean Ethnography and the Persian Imperial Lore
(April–June)

2017/18: The Classical World in Context: Persia

The Getty Scholars Program at the Villa for the 2017/2018 and 2018/2019 terms will address the political, intellectual, religious, and artistic relations between Persia, Greece, and Rome from the ninth century BC to AD 651. The Greeks regarded Media in western Iran as one of the great kingdoms of the East, but it was the Persian Empire, forged by the Achaemenid Dynasty (sixth to fourth century BC), that became their principal adversary. Reaching from the borders of Greece to India, the Persian Empire was viewed by the Greeks as a vastly wealthy and powerful rival and often as an existential threat. When the Macedonian king Alexander the Great finally defeated the Persians in 331 BC, Greek culture spread throughout the Near East, but native dynasties—first the Parthian (247 BC–AD 224) and then the Sasanian (AD 224–651)—soon reestablished themselves.

The rise of the Roman Empire as a world power quickly brought it, too, into conflict with Persia, despite the common trade that flowed through their territories. The 2017/2018 scholar year is the first of two that will be devoted to this theme. Priority will be given to research projects that are cross-cultural and interdisciplinary, and that utilize a wide range of archaeological, textual, and other evidence.

Getty Villa Scholars

Maria Brosius is Associate Professor of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto, Canada. Her key field of research is the Achaemenid Empire and the cultural contacts between the ancient Near East and the classical world.
The Persian Empires – Multilingual and Multiscriptual Centres for the Transmission of Knowledge
(September–October)

Albert de Jong is Professor of Comparative Religion and Religions of Antiquity at Universiteit Leiden, the Netherlands. His research focuses on Sasanian history, Iranian religions, and the study of religion.
East of the Euphrates: The Contribution of Sasanian History to Theorizing Late Antiquity
(April–June)

Vito Messina is Assistant Professor of Iranian Archaeology at Università di Torino, Italy. His research focuses on archaeology of Mesopotamia and Iran.
Lost Hellenistic Sculptures 'Rediscovered' in Mesopotamia and Iran
(April–June)

Margaret Miller is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Sydney, Australia. She is a scholar of archaeology, art history, and classics.
Selective Persianization of Greek Myth
(April–June)

Kathryn Morgan is Professor of Classics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on Ancient Greek culture.
Persia and Historical Process in Aeschylus' Persians
(September–December)

Alessandro Poggio is Research Fellow at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Italy. His research focuses on the history of art, and ancient Near Eastern and Greek archaeology.
Beyond 'Greco-Persian': Glyptic as an Index of Artistic Processes in the Eastern Mediterranean
(January–March)

Rolf Strootman is Associate Professor of Ancient History at the Universiteit Utrecht, the Netherlands. He is a scholar of history and culture of the ancient world.
Iranians in the Hellenistic East: Imperial Culture and Local Identity from the Persians to the Parthians (4th to 2nd Century BCE)
(September–March)

Miguel John Versluys is Professor of Classical and Mediterranean Archaeology at Universiteit Leiden, the Netherlands. He specializes in Hellenistic and Roman Eurasian archaeology.
Innovating Objects: The Impact of Global Connections and the Formation of the Roman Empire (ca. 200–30 BC)
(April–June)

Postdoctoral Fellow

Jake Nabel received his PhD in the Department of Classics at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
Made on the Margins: Ancient Persia, the Classical Mediterranean, and their Intermediaries
(September–June)

2016/17: The Classical World in Context: Egypt

For a second year, the Getty Scholars Program at the Villa will focus on relations between the cultures of the classical world and Egypt, which had a crucial, and often reciprocal, impact on cultural trajectories in both spheres from the Bronze Age through the coming of Islam. Priority will be given to research topics that are cross-cultural and interdisciplinary, utilizing a wide range of archaeological, textual, anthropological, and other evidence. This forms the first in a series of research projects that will investigate the ways in which the classical world interacted with the surrounding civilizations of the Mediterranean, Near East, and beyond through trade, warfare, diplomacy, cultural influence, and other forms of contact from the Bronze Age to late antiquity.

Getty Villa Scholars

Martin Bommas is Reader in Egyptology at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. His research focuses on Egyptology, Roman Archaeology, Isis Studies, and memory studies.
Re-membering Egypt: The Art of Creating Nature within Temples of Isis in the Roman World
(September–March)

Olaf E. Kaper is Professor of Egyptology at Leiden University, the Netherlands. He specializes in Egyptian religious iconography.
The Kellis Mammisi at the Crossroads Between Egypt and West in the Roman Empire
(April–June)

Martina Minas-Nerpel is Professor of Egyptology in the Department of History and Classics at Swansea University, United Kingdom. Her research concerns Egyptology with an emphasis on the Ptolemaic and Roman periods.
The Ptolemaic Queens in the Egyptian Temples: Intercultural 'Portraits' of Power
(September–March)

Branko Fredde van Oppen de Ruiter is Visiting Scholar and Curator at the Allard Pierson Museum, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His research interests include Hellenistic Egypt, iconography, royal ideology, art history, archaeology, and ancient history.
Ptolemaic Seals from Edfu
(April–June)

Richard Veymiers is Teaching and Research Assistant in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Liège, Belgium, and Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow in the Faculty of Archaeology at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. He is a scholar of the cultural history of the Hellenistic and Roman worlds, archaeology of religion in the Greek and roman cities, historical anthropology of images in ancient societies, and the diffusion and reception of the Egyptian gods in the classical world.
Sarapis from Memphis to Rome: A Cultural Biography
(September–December)

Predoctoral Fellows

Stephanie Pearson is Research Associate in the Institut für Archäologie at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany.
Collecting Culture: Luxury Goods and Roman Perceptions of Egypt
(September–June)

Bethany L. Simpson is Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Images and Identity: The Contextual Significance of Domestic Paintings in Roman Egypt
(September–June)

Guest Scholar

Manfred Bietak is Professor Emeritus of Egyptology at the University of Vienna, and Principal Investigator for the ERC Advanced Grant project "The Hyksos Enigma," based at the Institut für Orientalische und Europäische Archäologie at the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. His research focuses on the archaeology and history of Egypt and Nubia, and of the Levant and Cyprus in the Bronze Age.
The Hyksos Enigma
(January–March)

2015/16: The Classical World in Context: Egypt

From the Bronze Age through late antiquity, the cultures of the classical world have interacted with the surrounding civilizations of the Mediterranean, Near East, and beyond through trade, warfare, diplomacy, cultural exchange, and other forms of contact. These interactions had a crucial, and often reciprocal, impact on cultural trajectories in both spheres. In the first of a series of scholarly programs and related exhibitions exploring these interconnections, the 2015/2016 Getty Villa scholars will focus on relations between the cultures of the classical world and Egypt from prehistory to the coming of Islam. Priority will be given to research projects that are cross-cultural and interdisciplinary, utilizing a wide range of archaeological, textual, anthropological, and other evidence.

Getty Villa Scholars

Laurent Bricault is Professor of Roman History at Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès, France. His research concerns the diffusion and reception of the Egyptian gods in the classical world, cultural history of the Hellenistic and Roman worlds, the archaeology of religion in the Greek and Roman cities, historical anthropology of images in ancient societies, and ancient polytheisms and material/visual culture.
Sarapis from Memphis to Rome: A Cultural Biography
(April–June)

Susanna McFadden is Assistant Professor at Fordham University, New York. She is a scholar of Greco-Roman and Late Antique Egypt, and Roman and Late Antique wall paintings.
Tales of a Lost Art: Megalographic Wall Paintings and the World of Late Antiquity
(September–December)

John Pollini is Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology in the Department of Art History at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He specializes in classical art and archaeology and Late Antiquity.
From Polytheism to Christianity in Late Antique Egypt
(September–December)

Constance von Rüden is Junior Professor in the Institute of Archaeological Studies at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. She is a scholar of Mediterranean prehistory.
Embodiment and Learning in a Transcultural Perspective. The Case of the 'Aegean' Relief Paintings from Tell el Dab'a
(January–March)

Predoctoral Fellow

Henry Colburn is a Curatorial Fellow in Ancient Art at Harvard Art Museums, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Archaeology of Empire in Achaemenid Egypt
(September–June)

Guest Scholar

Jorrit Kelder is Associate Member of the Near and Middle Eastern Studies Sub-Faculty at the Oriental Institute of the University of Oxford, England. His research focuses on Aegean prehistory, Egyptian archaeology, Aegean relations with the Ancient Near East, and the archaeology of Early States.
From Mycenae to Memphis: Late Bronze Age Trade and Diplomacy Between Greece and Egypt
(April–June)

2014/15: Object–Value–Canon

Art-historical interpretation has traditionally proceeded from the description of an object; to discussions about its artistic, cultural, or commercial value; and then to attempts to place the object in a canon with other works. From Vasari to Gombrich and up to today, this process has been the established path of art-historical writing.

With the movement of art history from a Western-oriented discipline to a global one, this interpretive process—and the terms themselves—must be examined in a new way. Object, value, and canon have different significances in other historical and social contexts. A more diverse integration of understudied visual and archaeological objects necessitates a reassessment of the traditional approach in order to enrich the understanding of the world's artistic heritage.

In addition to the global turn, current technological developments present their own challenges to traditional art-historical methodologies. The unlimited accessibility of information confronts the researcher with expansive but unauthoritative resources. High-resolution images open ways to observe and investigate artworks that visits to museums cannot offer. The objects as well as the canon have to be reevaluated in the era of the digital humanities.

Getty Villa Scholars

Adolf Heinrich Borbein is Professor Emeritus at the Institut für Klassische Archäologie at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. His research focuses on classical archaeology and Greek and Roman sculpture.
Canon
(September–December)

Gabriella Cirucci is Research Assistant in the Faculty of Art at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Italy. Her research concerns Greek and Roman sculpture, and Roman art and visual culture.
Challenging the Canon of nobilia opera: Ancient Greek sculpture in Roman contexts
(September–December)

Steven Fine is Professor of Jewish History in the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies at Yeshiva University, New York. His research centers on cultural history, visual culture, Roman history, and Jewish history.
The Arch of Titus: From Roman Triumphal Arch to Lieu de Mémoire and Post-Colonial Icon
(January–March)

Christopher H. Hallett is Professor and Chair in the History of Art Department at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a scholar of Greek and Roman art.
The "Archaic Revival" of Augustan Rome: Primitivism in the Art and Monuments of Rome, 30–20 BCE
(September–December)

Maria Emilia Masci is Research Fellow in Classe di Lettere at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Italy. Her research concentrates on the history of archaeology, the history of collections, museum history, classical archaeology, Greek and South Italian painted vases, and the intellectual history of the 17th to the 19th centuries.
From Antiquarianism to Archaeology: Evolution of Aesthetic and Systematic Canons and History of Knowledge of Ancient Painted Pottery from late 17th to Early 19th Centuries
(April–June)

Marie-Louise Bech Nosch is Professor in the Centre for Textile Research at the University of Copenhagen/Saxo Institute, Denmark. Her research focuses on the Aegean Bronze Age, classical Greece, ancient history, and classical archaeology.
Textiles as Object -- Textiles as Value. The Normative and Formative Roles of Textiles, with Aegean Textiles at the Turn of the 1st Millennium BCE as a Case Study
(September–December)

Joanna S. Smith is Consulting Scholar in the Mediterranean Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. She is a scholar of Eastern Mediterranean and Near Eastern art history and archaeology.
Seal Stratigraphies from Enkomi, Cyprus
(April–June)

Postdoctoral Fellow

Sean Villareal Leatherbury received his doctorate from the University of Oxford. He specializes in Roman, late antique, and Byzantine art and archaeology.
The Arts of Votive Dedication from Rome to Byzantium
(September–June)

2013/14: Connecting Seas

Water has long been a significant means for the movement of goods and people. Sophisticated networks, at a variety of scales, were established in antiquity around the Mediterranean and the Black Seas, and later in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. Together with sporadic and accidental encounters, these networks fostered commerce in raw materials and finished objects, along with the exchange of ideas and cultural concepts. Far from being barriers, seas and oceans were vital links connecting cultures. The 2013–2014 academic year at the Getty Research Institute and Getty Villa will be devoted to exploring the art-historical impact of maritime transport.

How has the desire for specific commodities from overseas shaped social, political, and religious institutions? How has the introduction of foreign materials and ideas transformed local artistic traditions, and what novel forms and practices have developed from trade and other exchanges, both systematic and informal? What role do the objects born of these interactions have in enhancing cultural understandings or perpetuating misunderstandings? How has the rapidly accelerating pace of exchange in recent years influenced cross-cultural developments? The goal of this research theme is to explore how bodies of water have served, and continue to facilitate, a rich and complex interchange in the visual arts.

Getty Villa Scholars

Sandra Lynn Blakely is Associate Professor in the Department of Classics at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. She is a scholar of classics, anthropology, and Greek religion.
Seafaring and the Sacred: Maritime Networks and the Cult of the Great Gods of Samothrace
(September–June)

Owen P. Doonan is Professor in the Department of Art at California State University, Northridge. He is a scholar of classical archaeology, geography and long-term history, and colonial networks.
Connection and Community in the Black Sea
(January–March)

Carl Knappett is the Graham/Thompson Chair in Aegean Prehistory in the Department of Art at the University of Toronto, Canada. His research concentrates on Aegean prehistory.
Maritime Mobility in the Mediterranean: The Case of Minoanization
(January–June)

Corinna Riva is Senior Lecturer in Mediterranean Archaeology in the Institute of Archaeology at University College London, England. Her research focuses on Etruscan archaeology.
Pushing the Boundaries of Exchange: Emporic Trade and Culture Contact in the 6th Century BC Central Mediterranean
(September–December)

Caroline Anne-Sophie Sauvage is a Visiting Scholar at Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, California. She is a scholar of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Art and Archaeology.
Late Bronze Age Regional Identities and Distribution of Motifs: Mycenaean Pictorial Ceramics in their Cypriot and Levantine Contexts
(January–June)

Gert Jan Maria van Wijngaarden is Associate Professor at the Amsterdam Archaeological Centre at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. He specializes in Mediterranean archaeology.
The Relevance of Authenticity: Traveling Artists in Late Bronze Age Greece (1600–1200 BC)
(September–December)

Predoctoral Fellow

Ariane Marie Sophie de Saxcé is a PhD candidate in the Department of Archaeology at Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV); Institut national d'histoire de l'art (INHA), Paris, France.
From South Asia to the West: Cartography of Cultural Interactions in the Erythraean Sea (Third Century BC to Seventh Century AD)
(September–June)

Postdoctoral Fellow

Alex Robert Knodell received his doctorate from the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.
Sailing on the Cusp of History: Crafting Connections in the Early Mediterranean
(September–June)

2012/13: Color

Color is an essential component of artistic production and therefore should be fundamental to art historical analysis. The topic of color can be explored from various angles, giving insight into the aesthetics, symbolism, psychology, technology, materiality, conservation, and production of works of art. The Getty Research Institute invites proposals for the scholar year that address the artistic use of color from ancient to contemporary times in any culture.

Getty Villa Scholars

Fred C. Albertson is Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Memphis, Tennessee. He is a scholar of classical art and archaeology.
Palmyrene Sculpture in North American Museums
(January–March)

Matthew P. Canepa is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He specializes in the art and archaeology of ancient Iran and the Mediterranean.
Royal Glory, Divine Fortune: Contesting the Global Idea of Iranian Kingship in the Hellenized and Iranian Near East, Central and South Asia (330 BCE–642 CE)
(April–June)

Éva Kocziszky is Professor of German Literature in the Department of German at the University of West Hungary, Szombathely, Hungary. Her research concentrates on Neoclassicism, German poetry, the history of classical scholarship, and the reception of antiquity.
"White" Antiquity: Literary and Aesthetic Representations of Ancient Relics in the 20th Century
(September–December)

M. Michela Sassi is Associate Professor of History of Ancient Philosophy at the Università di Pisa. Her research concerns the history of Greek philosophy and science.
Theory and Practice of Colors in Ancient Greece
(April–June)

Francesco Tiradritti is Assistant Professor of Egyptology at the Kore University of Enna. His research focuses on ancient Egypt.
Color in Ancient Egypt: An Anthropological and Semantic Study
(April–June)

Konstantinos L. Zachos is President of the Scientific Committee of Nicopolis at the Greek Ministry of Culture and Tourism. His research concerns Aegean prehistory and Greek and Roman archaeology.
The Colors of Victory: The Monument of Augustus at Nicopolis, Greece. A Study of Painted and Stuccowork Decorations
(January–April)

Mantha Zarmakoupi is Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow in the Archäologisches Institut at the Universität zu Köln, Germany. She specializes in classical art and archaeology.
The Idea of Landscape in Roman Luxury Villas
(September–December)

Predoctoral Fellow

Tiziana D'Angelo is a PhD candidate in the Department of the Classics at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Travelling Colors: Artistic Models and Cultural Transfers in South Italian Funerary Wall Painting (IV–II BCE)
(September–June)

Guest Scholar

Roger Wilson is Professor of Archaeology of the Roman Empire in the Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. He is a scholar of the archaeology of Roman Sicily, the archaeology and history of the Western Greeks, Roman art and architecture, and the Roman Empire in the West, including Great Britain.
Luxury Living in Late Roman Sicily: the Villa of Piazza Armerina and its Context
(September–December)

National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow

Jennifer M. S. Stager received her PhD from the History of Art Department at the University of California, Berkeley.
The Embodiment of Color in Ancient Mediterranean Art
(September–June)

Museum Guest Scholar

Diane Wolfthal is David and Caroline Minter Chair in the Humanities in the Department of Art History at Rice University, Houston.
Host department: Associate Director of Collections
(April–June)

2011/12: Artistic Practice

Artists mobilize a variety of intellectual, organizational, technological, and physical resources to create their work. This scholar year will delve into the ways in which artists receive, work with, and transmit ideas and images in various cultural traditions.

At the Getty Research Institute, scholars will pay particular attention to the material manifestations of memory and imagination in the form of sketchbooks, notebooks, pattern books, and model books. How do notes, remarks, written and drawn observations reveal the creative process? In times and places where such media were not in use, what practices were developed to give ideas material form?

In the ancient world, artists left traces of their creative process in a variety of media, but many questions remain for scholars in residence at the Getty Villa: What was the role of prototypes such as casts and models; what was their relationship to finished works? How were artists trained and workshops structured? How did techniques and styles travel?

An interdisciplinary investigation among art historians and other specialists in the humanities will lead to a richer understanding of artistic practice.

Getty Villa Scholars

Gianfranco Adornato is Assistant Professor of Classical Archaeology in the Department of Humanities at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Italy. His research focuses on Western Greek art from archaic to classical periods.
Artistic Training in Ancient Times
(January–June)

Shane Butler is Professor of Classics at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research centers on Latin literature from antiquity through the Renaissance, with particular interests in rhetoric, poetics, and the history of the written word.
The Artist as Orpheus
(September–December)

Martine Denoyelle is Scientific Advisor for the History of Ancient Art and the History of Archaeology in the Dèpartement des Études et de la Recherche at the Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art, Paris, France. Her research concerns the history and reception of ancient Greek art.
Visual Quotations of Sculpture in Greek-Vase painting; Their Origins and their Function in the Building Up of Meaning
(April–June)

Postdoctoral Fellows

Sarah Lepinski received her doctorate from the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania. She specializes in the art and archaeology of the Roman and late antique Mediterranean.
Painting Practices in Roman and Late Antique Corinth, Greece
(September–June)

Emma Libonati received her doctorate from Worcester College, Oxford University, England. She is a scholar of Egyptian and Hellenistic statuary.
The Manufacture, Distribution, and Recycling of Statuary in Hellenistic Egypt: Bronze and Stone Statues from Herakleion and East Canopus, Abukir Bay, Egypt
(September–June)

2010/11: The Display of Art

"The Display of Art" continued as the theme for the Getty Research Institute from 2009–2010 into 2010–2011.

Display is a driving force in the art world by bringing together ideas with objects and creating narratives that assign meanings. Our experience of any object and the meaning we take from it change with the social, political, economic, and cultural contexts of its display. In some cases, objects only become works of art by virtue of being displayed.

The modern museum's raison d'être is display, and the study of museums and their history will be of interest during this scholar year, as will the relationship of display to conservation and interpretation. Aspects of display related to antiquity will also form a special focus. Finally, a particular display may itself be an artful endeavor worthy of study.

Getty Villa Scholars

Anthony Barbieri-Low is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he studies ancient Chinese art and archaeology.
Public Display of Monumental Art in Early Imperial China
(October–December)

Barbara Borg is Professor of Classical Archaeology in the department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter, England.
Changing Decorum: Displaying Art and Framing the Living in the Third Century A.D.
(January–June)

Peter Heslin is Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at Durham University, England.
The Museum of Augustus: The Porticus Philippi
(October–December)

Rachel Kousser is Associate Professor in the Department of Art at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York.
Ancient Iconoclasm: Destroying the Power of Images in Greece, 480–31 B.C.
(January–June)

Postdoctoral Fellows

John North Hopkins received his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied the architecture and geography of Archaic Rome.
City on Display: The Creation of a City and the Placement of Monuments in Early Rome
(October–June)

Felipe Rojas received his PhD in the Department of Classics at the University of California, Berkeley.
Display of Lydian Realia in Roman Sardis
(October–June)

Alessia Zambon is Attaché temporaire d'enseignement et recherché in the Department of Greek Archeology at Universite Paris 1 (Pantheon-Sorbonne).
"Le musee Fauvel": Collecting and Displaying Antiquities in Athens (1792–1824)
(October–June)

2009/10: The Display of Art

To display an object is to assert that it is worthy of inspection. The object may be considered culturally important or beautiful or the product of extraordinary skill, and its display may itself be an artful endeavor worthy of study. The creation of determined viewing conditions brings together ideas and objects, creating narratives that assign meanings, so that our experience of any object and the meaning we take from it change with its mode of display. Consider a cult statue set in an ancient temple, carried away and displayed as booty in a triumphal procession, reused as spolia, showcased in a sculpture garden, recast in plaster for artists to study, adorning the hall of a country house, exhibited in a national museum, reproduced on a postcard, and given a virtual existence on the web. The life story of a work of art requires attention to the social, political, economic, and cultural contexts of its display.

Villa Professor

Alain Schnapp is Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Université Paris I–Panthéon-Sorbonne.
Towards a Comparative History of Antiquarianism
(September–June)

Getty Villa Scholars

Pauline Schmitt-Pantel is Professor in the Department of History at Université Paris I–Panthéon-Sorbonne.
The Use of "Works of Art" and the Construction of Political Image in Ancient Greece
(March–June)

Christiane Vorster is Honorary Professor at the Institut für Kunstgeschichte und Archäologie, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn, and Research Associate in the Skulpturensammlung at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.
Display and Function of Mythological Sculpture in Late Antique Rome
(March–June)

Predoctoral Fellow

Juan Sebastian de Vivo is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Classics at Stanford University.
Contemplating Beauty, Collecting Ethics: Objects and the Moral Self
(September–June)

Postdoctoral Fellow

Delphine Burlot received her Thèse d'archéologie from the Université Paris IV–Sorbonne.
Fakes on Display. The Example of Forgeries of Antique Mural Painting Made by G. Guerra
(September–June)

2008/09: Ancient Images: The Power and Function of Ancient Images

In 2008–2009 the scholars program at the Getty Villa builds upon the work of Villa Professor François Lissarrague and focuses on the creation, circulation, and reception of images in antiquity. How ancient images functioned in later periods will also be of interest. The Greek polis gave birth to a foundational system of representation based on a precise idea of the human body. How were these representations employed? What were the Bronze Age antecedents of such images? What criteria did the Etruscans and the Romans use in selecting and reproducing Greek images? More generally, how did images "react" to the subjectivities of viewers both at the centers and the periphery of the Greco-Roman world? Scholars who wish to be in residence at the Getty Villa and whose projects address the power, transfer, and function of images in the ancient Mediterranean world are encouraged to apply.

Villa Professor

François Lissarrague is Professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales Centre Louis Gernet, Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art, Paris. He specializes in Attic imagery, iconography, and Greek vase painting.
The Power and Function of Ancient Images
(September–June)

Visiting Scholars

Eve D'Ambra is Professor and Chair, Department of Art at Vassar College. She specializes in Roman sculpture and portraiture, as well as issues of urbanism in the capital and the provinces.
Beauty and the Roman Portrait: The Private Portrait in the High Empire

Christopher Faraone is The Frank Curtis Springer and Gertrude Melcher Springer Professor in the Humanities and in the College, University of Chicago. He specializes in ancient Greek magic, ritual, and mythology.
The Function and History of Ancient Greek Amulets
(January–March)

Valérie Huet is Maître de Conférence in the history department at Université Paris 7 – Denis Diderot, UFR GHSS. She specializes in images of sacrifice, the banquet and ritual activity in Rome.
Images of "Greek" Rituals in Rome
(January–March)

Niall Slater is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Latin & Greek, Department of Classics at Emory University. He specializes in ancient theater, archaeology of the theater, the ancient novel, and gender studies.
Envisioning Apuleius
(September–December)

Adrian Staehli is Privatdozent (assistant professor and lecturer) at the Archaeologisches Seminar, Universität Zürich. He specializes in the cultural history of images from classical antiquity, Greek sculpture, vase painting, portraiture, and the history of collecting.
Images of Media: Images and Social Communication in Archaic and Classical Athens
(April–June)

Marie-Christine Villanueva-Puig is Researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS): Centre Louis Gernet, Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris. She specializes in Greek vase forms, painting, and ancient iconography.
Power and Function of Images in the City of Athens in the Archaic and Classical Periods (sixth-fifth centuries b.c.)
(April–June)

Postdoctoral Fellow

Francesca Tronchin is Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Art History at The Ohio State University. She specializes in Roman domestic decor and issues of eclecticism in ancient sculptural displays.
Eclecticism in Roman Domestic Ensembles
(September–June)

2007/08: Cultural Identity: Cultural Identity and the Peoples of the Ancient Mediterranean

Scholarship on cultural identity generally privileges the ways that groups differentiate themselves from others. Attention is paid to the drawing of boundaries between communities by the deployment of identifying symbols and practices ranging from dress and language to works of art and religious ritual. Indeed, the binary self versus other structures most research in this area.

In 2007–2008, the Villa scholars program will build upon the work of Erich Gruen (in residence for the year as Villa Professor) to explore another aspect of cultural differentiation in the context of the ancient Mediterranean world. In constructing cultural identity, ancient peoples often willingly acknowledged their ties to others. How did ancient Mediterranean peoples visualize themselves as part of a broader heritage? How did they forge links with other groups? What happens to research in this area when similarities and togetherness are stressed rather than differences and otherness?

Villa Professor

Erich Gruen is the Gladys Rehard Wood Professor of History and Classics at the University of California, Berkeley. He specializes in Greek and Roman history as well as cultural appropriations and collective identity in antiquity.
Cultural Identity and the Peoples of the Ancient Mediterranean
(September–June)

Getty Villa Scholar

Ada Cohen is associate professor at Dartmouth College in the Department of Art History. She specializes in Alexander the Great's imagery and the construction of sexualized and gendered visual identities.
Ideals of Beauty in Ancient Greece
(January–June)

Visiting Scholars

Kevin Butcher is a professor in the Department of History and Archaeology at the American University in Beirut. He specializes in Greek and Roman numismatics and the ancient economy in the Roman Near East, particularly Syria and Lebanon.
Religious Architecture and Identities in Roman Syria
(September–December)

Cecilia D'Ercole is a professor at the Université Paris I at the Sorbonne. She specializes in Adriatic cultures and identities, Roman conquests of Italy, and Mediterranean exchange.
Cultures between Unity and Differences: The Case of the Adriatic Sea Peoples (VIIIth–IVth Century B.C.)
(September–December)

Josephine Quinn is lecturer in ancient history and classics at Oxford University and fellow and tutor at Worcester College. She specializes in Roman North Africa in the Republican period.
Hellenistic Africa: Connectivity, Culture and Identity between the Mediterranean and the Sahara
(April–June)

Karen Stern is lecturer at the University of Southern California, School of Religion. She specializes in Judaism in antiquity.
Emulation is the Sincerest Form of Romanitas: Interpreting Jewish Culture in the Southern Mediterranean (1st–6th Centuries, C.E.)
(January–March)

Postdoctoral Fellow

Maria (Molly) Swetnam-Burland received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. She is lecturer at Portland State University in Oregon. She specializes in the reception of Egyptian culture within the Roman Empire.
Egypt in the Roman Imagination: Cult, Culture, and the Invention of the Foreign
(September–June)