John Dobbins

John Dobbins is a field archaeologist who has excavated in Spain, Italy, Greece, and Syria. He specializes in ancient Roman art, archaeology, architecture, and urbanism, and he regularly teaches the History of Art I course at the University of Virginia. John holds the posts of the Richard A. & Sara Page Mayo NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor and Professor of Classical Art & Archaeology in the McIntire Department of Art at the University of Virginia. He is also director of the Pompeii Forum Project, a project that is rewriting the history of the forum in Pompeii. His 2007 co-edited book, The World of Pompeii, treats all aspects of Pompeian life. Professor Dobbins has over thirty years of experience in teaching on site, and his interests extend far beyond his Roman specialty. Professor Dobbins received a B.A. from the College of the Holy Cross, an M.A. (English Literature) from Boston University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Classical Art and Archaeology from the University of Michigan.

Allen James Fromherz

Dr. Allen Fromherz is a Professor of Mediterranean and Middle East History at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Dartmouth College in 2002 and received his PhD from St. Andrews University in Scotland in Medieval Islamic History in 2006. His first two books, The Almohads: the Rise of an Islamic Empire (IB Tauris) and Ibn Khaldun, Life and Times (Edinburgh University Press) examine the rise of empire in medieval North Africa and Iberia. Dr. Fromherz's most recently completed work The Near West: North Africa and Europe (Edinburgh – Expected end of 2016), examines the history of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish interactions across the Western Mediterranean, especially in Iberia, Morocco, Tunisia, and Italy.  Dr. Fromherz has held several international fellowships from Fulbright, Gerda Henkel Stiftung, the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center, and a senior fellowship from NYU Abu Dhabi. Dr. Fromherz has led and organized four study abroads, including the popular Marvels of Medieval Spain: the Culture and History of Muslims, Jews, and Christians. His regular classes on Medieval Spain and the Mediterranean focus on convivencia, how Muslims, Jews, and Christians, living together, created a common culture that still lives on in Iberia to this day.

Carrie Sulosky-Weaver

Carrie L. Weaver is a classical archaeologist affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia and has been teaching, writing, and researching for over 15 years. Her area of specialization is the art, architecture, and archaeology of the ancient Mediterranean world, with an emphasis on funerary art and architecture, burial practices, and the analysis of human bone. She has excavated in Pompeii and Sicily, and analyzed human remains from Rome, Sicily, Turkey, and the UK. Carrie is the author of The Bioarchaeology of Classical Kamarina: Life and Death in Greek Sicily (University Press of Florida, 2015) and Marginalised Populations in the Ancient Greek World: The Bioarchaeology of the Other (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming April 2022), and the co-editor of The Ancient Art of Transformation: Case Studies from Mediterranean Contexts (Oxbow Books, 2019).

Janet Duncan Jones

Janet Duncan Jones is Professor of Classics at Bucknell University. She received her B.A. in Latin from the College of William and Mary and her M.A. and Ph.D. in classical archaeology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Janet is an active field archaeologist specializing in Greek and Roman art and architecture, ancient urbanization, ancient technology with a focus on ancient glass production, and environmental history. Her publications focus on ancient technology and the impact of those technologies on ancient landscapes. Her current research focuses on the impact of the Moors in southern Spain on urbanism, architecture, technology, and intellectual history. Janet is full of stories from her extensive travels in the Mediterranean and Middle East and from over 20 years of archaeological field work in Greece at Athens and Corinth, in Turkey at Gordion and Gritille Hoyuk, in Tunisia at Carthage, and in Jordan at el-Lejjun, Humayma, and Aqaba.

Allan Langdale

Allan Langdale grew up on Vancouver Island wondering what the rest of the world was like and has spent much of his adult life finding out. Allan is an art and architectural historian, photographer, filmmaker, and travel writer who received his Ph.D. in art history from UC Santa Barbara. He has taught courses in Italian Renaissance art, Greek, Roman, Byzantine (including Georgian and Armenian architecture), and Indian and Islamic art and architecture. He currently teaches art history at UC Santa Cruz as a lecturer.

Along with several articles, Allan wrote the definitive architectural field guide to the little-known region of Turkish Cyprus, In a Contested Realm (2012) and also made the award-winning documentary film The Stones of Famagusta: the Story of a Forgotten City (2008). His travel books include Palermo: Travels in the City of Happiness (2015) and The Hippodrome of Istanbul / Constantinople: An Illustrated Handbook of its History (2019).

A popular Smithsonian Expert, Allan has traveled extensively in the eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea region, the Middle East—including Jordan and Egypt—and India.