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
Geirr Kristian Homme Lunden, University of Basel, Switzerland – Chair
Geirr Lunden is Chair of the Permanent Committee. He is a doctoral student at the University of Basel in Switzerland, situated in both the Department of Ancient Civilizations and the graduate school eikones – Center for the theory and history of the image. He has previously attained his MA(Res) in Egyptology at Leiden University’s department of Classics and Ancient Civilizations in the Netherlands, and his BA in Egyptology at Swansea University in Wales. For his PhD research, Geirr focuses on the concept of artistic tradition in ancient Egyptian society, and how the modern idea of what a tradition should be like has affected the way in which we perceive meanings and practices that were part of ancient Egyptian lives. Materially, the focus is on images of the Nile marsh in ancient Egyptian tombs of the Old through the New Kingdom, and Egyptological art history of the 19th and 20th centuries. As such, his research interests are particularly embedded in the art history of ancient Egypt, and the scientific history of Egyptology. In both topics, he has a particular focus on the consideration of over- and underrepresented views. He was also the head of the organizing committee at the CRE 2023 in Basel.
Anna Charlotte Dietrich, Austrian Archaeological Institute
Having studied Egyptology and Communication and Media Studies at the Universities of Leipzig and Leiden (2013-2019), Charlotte Dietrich is currently a PhD-candidate at the University of Vienna, Austria. Her dissertation focuses on the Historical Chronology of the New Kingdom, a topic which she has also pursued as a praedoc in the ERC-project “Challenging Time(s)” at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2020-2023). Other research interests include cursive scripts (hieratic, abnormal hieratic, and demotic), digital epigraphy, and object itineraries. She has worked on several scientific projects, including the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae and the DFG-project „Vorarbeiten zu einer Grammatik der hieroglyphischen Urkunden der 18. Dynastie“ (both in Leipzig) and has published her research both in scientific formats as well as for a popular audience.
Guilherme Borges Pires, Centre for the Humanities, Nova University Lisbon, Portugal (CHAM/NOVA-FCSH)
Guilherme Borges Pires holds a BA in History (2013) and a MA in Egyptology (2015). Currently, he is a PhD candidate in Ancient History (Egyptology) at NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities (Lisbon, Portugal). His research focuses on the concepts of Creator and Creation in the religious hymns of the New Kingdom (ca. 1539-1077 BCE), of which he is preparing a first translation into Portuguese. In 2017, he was awarded an FCT PhD Grant. From 2016 to 2017, he proceeded with his doctoral research and attended courses at École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris, France), and he volunteered at the Egypt Exploration Society (London, United Kingdom) between 2020 and 2023, working with both Egypt Travel Magazines and Amarna Object Cards. He is a Researcher at CHAM (NOVA FCSH-UAc) and a member of Res Antiquitatis – Journal of Ancient History’s Editorial Team. Since 2022, he has been a lecturer of the online Egyptological programs at the Universidad de Alcalá (Spain). Guilherme is also the co-host of a podcast about ancient Egypt in Portuguese, titled Três egiptólogues entram num bar (“Three Egyptologists walk into a bar”).
Maarten Praet, Johns Hopkins University (USA) – Webmaster
Maarten Praet 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.
To contact the CRE Permanent Committee, please email the committee members at crepermanentcommittee@gmail.com.