Karin Sowada appointed Director of Australian Centre for Egyptology

CACHE is pleased to congratulate our Co-Deputy Director Dr Karin Sowada on her appointment as Director of the Australian Centre for Egyptology at Macquarie University.

Karin was appointed in May this year following the retirement of Prof. Naguib Kanawati, who has led the Australian Centre for Egyptology since its inception. Prof. Martin Bommas (Director of the Macquarie University History Museum) and Dr Susanne Binder (Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and Archaeology and the Department of Media, Communications, Creative Arts, Language and Literature) will serve as the Deputy Directors.

Karin brings a diverse and prolific background to her new role. Over the last three decades, she has conducted archaeological research into Egypt’s relations with the Mediterranean region during the Bronze Age, particularly the Middle East. She has a long relationship with Macquarie University and the Australian Centre for Egyptology, having accompanied their archaeological projects in Egypt since 1995. Karin has also worked at sites in Jordan and served as Assistant Curator of the Nicholson Museum (now part of the Chau Chak Wing Museum) between 1996–2005. In addition to her academic career, Karin brings experience from community service and government, including service as Australian Democrats Senator for NSW in Federal Parliament during the early 1990s.

Karin recently came to the formal end of a four-year ARC Future Fellowship “Pyramids, Power and the Dynamics of States in Crisis”, which culminated in organising a major international interdisciplinary conference, “Egypt and the Mediterranean World from the Late Fourth through the Third Millennium BCE”. She now joins the Department of History and Archaeology as a full-time academic staff member.

We wish Karin all the best in this role and look forward to continuing to collaborate with the Australian Centre for Egyptology in the future!

For updates on Karin’s work, follow her on Twitter. For more information about the Australian Centre for Egyptology and the Rundle Foundation for Egyptian Archaeology, explore their website.