The Board of Trustees of the Albright Institute in Jerusalem
is pleased to announce the appointment of
Dr. Katharina Schmidt
to the position of Director of the W.F. Albright Institute in Jerusalem
Dr. Schmidt will take up the position on 1 June 2022
Dr. Katharina Schmidt
Dr. Katharina Schmidt is the current Director of the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology (GPIA) in Amman, a position she has held since 2016. Dr. Schmidt studied Near Eastern Archaeology, Assyriology, and Pre-and Proto History at the Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU) in Munich and the Sorbonne in Paris.
In 2016, Dr. Schmidt earned her doctorate from LMU. Her dissertation on glass production in the Iron Age of Mesopotamia was funded, in part, by the Graduate School “Distant Worlds” program and she was also a fellow at the Research Training Group “Value and Equivalence” at the Goethe University, Frankfurt. She continued her study of chemical analyses of glass and silicates as a visiting researcher at University College London. Currently, Dr. Schmidt is completing her habilitation on Iron Age statuary from the kingdom of Ammon. The project is supported by the Schwarz Fellowship Program (Habilitation Scholarship). Since 2019 Dr. Schmidt has also held a teaching position at the University of Muenster, Germany (Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität).
Dr. Schmidt has done fieldwork throughout the Near East and Europe including Jordan, Syria (Tell Halaf), Turkey (Sirkeli Höyük, Dülük Baba Tepesi), and Germany. Since 2016, she has served as the Director of the Tall Zira´a excavation project (Jordan), funded by the German Archaeological Institute (DAI). She is especially interested in the glass materials from the site and collaborates with Andrew Shortland of Cranfield University (UK) on the vitrified materials from the excavations. She works on several other projects in Jordan including the “Eastern Badia Archaeological Project” sponsored by the University of Chicago and Whitman College and runs the “Edomite Hilltop Settlements” project with a focus on remote sensing with Piotr Bienkowski, Mohammad al Najar, and Abdullah al Rawabdeh.
Dr. Schmidt also has a keen interest in public outreach and cultural heritage. She has curated a special exhibition entitled “Tall Zira´a – Mirror of Jordan´s History” in the Jordan National Museum, Amman, funded by the German Foreign Office and the Regula Pestalozzi Foundation. At Umm Qais/Gadara and Tall Zira´a, she coordinates a cultural heritage project with UNESCO supported by the EU Madad-Fund to “Support livelihoods through cultural heritage development. Creating decent job opportunities through Employment Intensive methods applied to the safeguarding of cultural heritage in the northern districts of Jordan and Iraq.”
During her five years as Director of the GPIA in Amman, Dr. Schmidt has learned the complexities of managing a foreign research center in the Middle East and has excelled at managing the institute, organizing innovative programming, coordinating researchers, and developing research and public outreach projects.
