Kara Cooney

Kathlyn M. (Kara) Cooney is an American Egyptologist and archaeologist. She is a professor of Egyptian Art and Architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) specializing in craft production, coffin studies, and economies in the ancient world, particularly the Ramesside era (Nineteenth through Twentieth Dynasties) and chair of the Department of Near Eastern Language and Cultures at UCLA. As well as for her scholarly work, she is known for hosting television shows on ancient Egypt on the Discovery Channel as well as for writing a popular-press book on the subject.

Education and career Raised in Houston, she obtained her Bachelor of Arts in German and Humanities from the University of Texas at Austin in 1994. She was awarded a PhD in 2002 by Johns Hopkins University for Near Eastern Studies. She was part of an archaeological team excavating at the artisans' village of Deir el Medina in Egypt, as well as Dahshur and various tombs at Thebes. In 2002 she was Kress Fellow at the National Gallery of Art and worked on the preparation of the Cairo Museum exhibition Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt. After a temporary one-year position at UCLA, she took a three-year postdoctoral teaching position at Stanford University, She currently resides in Los Angeles.

Television She hosted two Discovery Channel documentary series: Out of Egypt, first aired in August 2009, and Egypt's Lost Queen, which also featured Zahi Hawass.

Books

Personal Cooney's paternal grandparents were from County Cork in Ireland. She is named after her Irish-Protestant grandmother Kathlyn Mary, who was disowned by her family for marrying Cooney’s Irish-Catholic grandfather James. Her mother is Italian, her grandmother was from the Abruzzi region, and her grandfather from Naples. She uses the name Kathlyn for her scholarly work, and her nickname Kara for professional but non-academic work.