Current Research in Egyptology is organised in a democratic fashion. Any university wishing to host the conference can submit a proposal and a presentation during the Annual General Meeting (AGM) in any particular year. At the end of the presentations, the vote of the assembly decides the winner. A committee representing the successful university arranges the following conference, while a permanent committee provides assistance and works on the long-term issues related to the conference. In order to allow a wider involvement of students in the CRE organisation, each member can remain in the permanent committee for a total of two years. A list of previous Permanent Committee members can be consulted here.
CRE Permanent Committee
Maarten Praet, Johns Hopkins University (USA) – Chair
Maarten Praet is Chair of the Permanent Committee. He is a Ph.D. candidate in Egyptian Art and Archaeology at the Johns Hopkins University. Before starting his doctoral degree in the US, he earned three MA degrees – in ancient history, archaeology, and Egyptology – at KU Leuven University in Belgium. Maarten has extensive fieldwork experience in Egypt, where he worked in sites such as Deir el-Bersha, the Mut temple precinct at Karnak, Deir el-Medina and Giza. He also has experience working in museums, such as the British Museum in London and the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum in Baltimore. In his Ph.D. dissertation, The Reign of Mentuhotep II Reconsidered, he uses the previously unstudied decorated wall fragments of Mentuhotep II’s funerary complex in Deir el-Bahari to study this king’s important artistic, political, societal, and religious innovations that would become part of the ancient Egyptian canon for the next 2000 years.
Sara Aly, The British Museum, UK
Sara Aly completed a Bachelor in Classics at the University of Milan, followed by an MA in Egyptology at the University of Manchester. She is currently an Art Market Investigator in the Recovery Programme at the British Museum, where her work focuses on identifying and supporting the recovery of missing items from the museum’s collection. She also contributes to the efforts of the Circulating Artefacts project (British Museum), where she investigates and documents the trade of illicitly sourced antiquities. She identifies looted Ancient Egyptian artefacts sold on the online art market with the ultimate aim of facilitating their repatriation. Her research focuses on examining the valuable archaeological information retained by looted artefacts, while addressing the impact of the illicit trade on museums and academic scholarship. This work prioritises advancing provenance research on unprovenanced artefacts, with a particular focus on northern Egyptian coffins. Since 2023, Sara has been a member of the Franco-Egyptian Archaeological Mission of Western Thebes working at the Ramesseum. Here she analyses cartonnage and coffin fragments discovered in tombs dating from the Middle Kingdom to the Third Intermediate Period.
Dr. Mohamed Youssef Sedek, Misr University for Science and Technology, Egypt
Mohamed Youssef Sedek is a lecturer at the Faculty of Archaeology and Tourism Guidance at Misr University for Science and Technology (MUST), and a restorer at the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology (IFAO). He specializes in metals, mural paintings, wood, and stones. Youssef has extensive field experience, having worked in missions since 2019, including the French mission at Deir el-Medina in Luxor (specifically working in tombs TT216, TT340 and TT265), the French mission at Tanis, and the Portuguese mission in the tomb of Akhmerutnisut (G 2184) on the Giza Plateau. He is also a member of the Faculty of Archaeology and Tourist Guidance mission at Saqqara. He also has experience in museum work, having restored several artifacts at the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square in 2021, and received training in recording and documenting archaeological artifacts at the Grand Egyptian Museum in 2018. He obtained a master’s degree in the restoration of metal artifacts composited with leather in 2022, followed by a PhD in restoration of metal artifacts with honors in 2025.
To contact the CRE Permanent Committee, please email the committee members at crepermanentcommittee@gmail.com.