Lynn Meskell

Lynn Meskell (born 1967) is an Australian archaeologist and anthropologist who currently works as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

She has worked as the 26th Penn Integrates Knowledge Program (PIK) Professor since her appointment in 2020, which is a program appointed to faculty with multidisciplinary research and teaching and who are working in at least two Penn Schools.

Meskell is also the Richard D. Green Professor of Anthropology in the School of Arts and Sciences, Graduate Professor of Historic Preservation in the Weitzman School of Design, and a curator for the Penn Museum's Middle East and Asia areas.

Education Meskell received her BA from the University of Sydney in 1994 (First Class) and University Medal. She was awarded the King's College scholarship from the University of Cambridge for her PhD in archaeology (1994–1997). In her doctoral dissertation, Meskell analyzed data from the settlement and cemeteries of Deir el-Medina, a New Kingdom worker's village across the Nile River from Luxor.

Since 2020, Meskell has been a professor in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Weitzman School of Design, and a Penn Museum curator for the Middle East and Asia. Meskell received the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's New Directions Fellowship in 2004, supporting training in ethnography and African studies to prepare her for work in South Africa.

Research Meskell's interests include socio-politics, archaeological ethics, global heritage, materiality, as well as feminist and postcolonial theory. She traced the politics of governance and sovereignty and the subsequent implications for multilateral diplomacy, international conservation, and heritage rights.

Awards and honors Meskell is an Honorary Professor in the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, and in the Center for Archaeology, Heritage & Museum Studies, Shiv Nadar University, India. and Liverpool University in the UK.

She has been awarded grants and fellowships for over 20 years from various institutions, including from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Australian Research Council, the American Academy in Rome, the School of American Research, Oxford University and Cambridge University.

In 2024, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate (doctor honoris causa) from the University of Bergen, Norway and in 2025 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.

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