Jodi Magness holds a senior endowed chair in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism. From 1992-2002, she was Associate/ Assistant Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology in the Departments of Classics and Art History at Tufts University, Medford, MA. She received her B.A. in Archaeology and History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1977), and her Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania (1989). From 1990-92, Magness was Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in Syro- Palestinian Archaeology at the Center for Old World Archaeology and Art at Brown University.

Magness’ book The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002) won the 2003 Biblical Archaeology Society’s Award for Best Popular Book in Archaeology in 2001-2002 and was selected as an “Outstanding Academic Book for 2003” by Choice Magazine. Magness’ book The Archaeology of the Early Islamic Settlement in Palestine (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003) was awarded the 2006 Irene Levi-Sala Book Prize in the category of non-fiction on the archaeology of Israel.

Magness’ other books include Aspects of Jewish Daily Life in Late Second Temple Period Palestine (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans; in press); Debating Qumran: Collected Essays on Its Archaeology (Leuven: Peeters, 2004); Hesed ve-Emet, Studies in Honor of Ernest S. Frerichs (co-edited with S. Gitin; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998); and Jerusalem Ceramic Chronology circa 200-800 C.E. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1993). In addition, she has published numerous articles in journals and edited volumes. Her research interests, which focus on Palestine in the Roman, Byzantine, and early Islamic periods, include ancient pottery, ancient synagogues, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Roman army in the East. Magness has participated on 20 different excavations in Israel and Greece, including co-directing the 1995 excavations in the Roman siege works at Masada. From 2003-2007 Magness co-directed excavations in the late Roman fort at Yotvata, Israel (now in the process of publication).

In 1997-98, Magness was awarded a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies and a fellowship in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. for research on The Archaeology of the Early Islamic Settlement in Palestine. In 2000-2001, Magness was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowship for College Teachers and a Skirball Visiting Fellowship at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies for research on The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls. In spring 2005 Magness received a Fulbright Lecturing Award through the United States-Israel Educational Foundation to teach two courses at the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2007-08, Magness was awarded a fellowship at the School for Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ for research on Aspects of Jewish Daily Life.

In 2008 Magness received a national teaching honor: the Archaeological Institute of America’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. She recently signed a contract with The Teaching Company to produce a 36-lecture course on “The World of Jesus” (scheduled for release in December 2011). Magness is currently working on a book entitled The Archaeology of the Holy Land (586 B.C.E. – 640 A.D.) (under contract with Cambridge University Press).

Magness is a member of the Managing Committee of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and the Program Committee of the Society of Biblical Literature. She has also been a member of the Board of Trustees of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem (and past Vice-President), the Governing Board of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), and the Board of Trustees of the American Schools of Oriental Research. She served as President of the North Carolina Society of the AIA and the Boston Society of the AIA.

October 2009