I am thrilled and pleased to be able finally to say “Hi!” for the first time to our EES members, supporters, and friends after having been appointed Director. It is an honour and a privilege to be succeeding Dr Chris Naunton as the head of this vibrant Egyptological institute. I know it will be hard to follow the path led by such an energetic leader as Chris has been, but I am ready to take up the challenge!
As I have just arrived in UK Egyptology, please allow me to briefly introduce myself. After having defended my PhD in 2008 at the Université Paris IV-Sorbonne, I entered the same year at the Institut français d’archéologie orientale du Caire (Ifao) as a foreign scientific member specializing in Egyptian archaeology. Two years later, while still working for the Ifao, I was awarded a two-year postdoctoral fellowship from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, which I spent as an associate scholar at the Université du Québec à Montréal in Canada (UQAM), where I am now an associate professor in the History Department. Since that time, I have been appointed Director of the French archaeological mission at Deir el-Medina (Ifao), a site no doubt familiar to many of you, and become a full time archaeologist at the Ifao.
Apart from my excavations at Deir el-Medina, I also work for the French missions of Coptos (Ifao/Université Lumière-Lyon II) and Balat/Ayn Asil (Ifao), as well as for the Great Hypostyle Hall Project in the Temple of Karnak (joint mission University of Memphis/UQAM).
The main mission of the EES is, without doubt, to increase knowledge, which the Society has been doing superbly since its creation. This mission takes many different forms, such as supporting fieldwork and, more generally, research, disseminating the results of the funded research as well as training students in Egypt, the UK and further afield. I can assure you that I will personally oversee that we continue on this path and support these activities to the greatest extent of our possibilities.
I hope to have the chance to seeing you soon!