Lynn Meskell
Full visit: Sept. 22-26, 2025
Full visit: April 18-22, 2022

• Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK), University of Pennsylvania
• Professor, Anthropology, School of Arts & Sciences, University of Pennsylvania
• Professor, Graduate Program in Historic Preservation, Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania
• Curator, Middle East and Asia sections, Penn Museum, University of Pennsylvania
• ADW-PAL term: 2019-26
• Subject Area: Social Sciences
• Faculty host: Adam T. Smith (Associate Dean of Faculty; Professor, Dept. of Anthropology)

Lynn Meskell is a world-renowned archaeologist and anthropologist whose work has transformed thinking on the way human society is shaped by a material world of bodies, places, things, and the ruins of the past. She is a recognized leader in fields that range from the archaeology of Egypt and Neolithic Anatolia to the ethnographic study of global heritage institutions.

Meskell holds joints joint appointments at the University of Pennsylvania, in the Department of Anthropology of the School of Arts & Sciences, the Departments of Historic Preservation and City & Regional Planning in the Weitzman School of Design, and the Penn Museum, as a curator in both the Asian and Near East sections. In June 2025, Meskell was named as a 2026 Getty Scholar and will spend a summer in residency in Los Angeles, developing her latest project on the securitization of heritage, titled “Ruin and Repair: A Heritage of War from UNESCO to NATO.” And in July 2025, Meskell was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy, the United Kingdom’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. in honor of her outstanding contributions to the humanities and social sciences.

In May 2025, in collaboration with NATO, Meskell delivered the major lecture, “RUINED: How and Why We Weaponize the Past,” at the CBRL Amman Institute (Jordan), exploring how both UNESCO and NATO are grappling with the militarization and securitization of cultural heritage. Her continued partnerships with NATO include advising on cultural property protection under NATO’s Human Security and Protection of Civilians initiatives and organizing workshops with military and academic partners, including the Dutch Armed Forces, as part of the ongoing efforts to shape NATO’s evolving policies on safeguarding cultural heritage in conflict zones.

Since 2011, she has conducted an institutional ethnography of UNESCO World Heritage, tracing what the politics of governance and sovereignty mean for diplomacy, international conservation, and heritage rights. She has undertaken a large-scale survey project in Syria and Iraq to assess public opinion on heritage destruction and reconstruction. Her landmark institutional ethnography of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) World Heritage, A Future in Ruins: UNESCO, World Heritage and the Dream of Peace (Oxford University Press, 2018) rereads the politics of preservation in relation to international history and global practices of governance and sovereignty. It was awarded the 2019 Best Book Award by the Society for American Archaeology.

Meskell’s other books include The Nature of Heritage: The New South Africa (Blackwell, 2012); Object Worlds in Ancient Egypt: Material Biographies Past and Present (Berg, 2004); Private Life in New Kingdom Egypt (Princeton, 2002); and Archaeologies of Social Life: Age, Sex, Class Etcetera in Ancient Egypt (Blackwell, 1999). She is the founding editor of the Journal of Social Archaeology (Sage Publications 2001).

Meskell holds Honorary Professorships at Oxford University and Liverpool University in the UK and the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.