Biography
Anastasia is the Curator of Greece, Rome and Cyprus at the Department of Antiquities of the Fitzwilliam Museum. She is responsible for research and exhibition projects and permanent displays in the fields of Greek, Cypriot and Roman collections. She is currently leading the 4-year research project ‘Being an Islander’: Art and Identity of the large Mediterranean Islands, (2019-2023) aiming to critically re-examine the concept of island life through material culture. The project will culminate in a large exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum (21/02/202- 05/06/2023) displaying archaeological finds and artworks from the islands of Cyprus, Sardinia and Crete. She has previously curated an interdisciplinary exhibition on the history of codebreaking. Anastasia gained her PhD in Classical Archaeology at the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge (2008) and was a postdoctoral researcher at the Topoi Excellence Cluster, Freie Universität Berlin (2009-2010), prior to joining the Fitzwilliam Museum. She has also lectured for the University of London, Birkbeck College and is currently an external collaborator to two interdisciplinary research networks in Cyprus and Germany.
Research
Anastasia’s core research interests are in the Archaeology of the Mediterranean and of the Mediterranean islands, with emphasis on the cultures of the Aegean and Cyprus. She is particularly engaged with questions of island identity, mobility and migration in the Ancient World, as well as with anthropological perspectives to interpreting material culture, as well as the application of Visual Anthropology in documentary film. Anastasia has also worked widely in the fields of Public Archaeology, Sensory Archaeology and Public engagement with Mediterranean collections.
Anastasia is the co-Director of the West Area of Samos Archaeological project (WASAP), a 5-year intensive survey project on the island of Samos, Greece under the auspices of the British School at Athens. At Cambridge Anastasia is also a member of the Managing Committee of the Cambridge Centre for Greek Studies (CCGS). She is also a member of the Council for the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, a member of the Management Committee of the Society for Aegean Prehistory and a member of the ICOM UK and the ICOM International Committee for Education and Cultural Action.
Key Publications
Key publications:
Material Cultures in Public Engagement: Re-inventing Public Archaeology within Museum Collections, Christophilopoulou A., Oxford, Oxbow, 2020.
Codebreakers & Groundbreakers, with I. Galanakis and J. Grime, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 2017
In preparation:
Being an Islander: Art and Identity of the large Mediterranean Islands, forthcoming, December 2022.
Selected articles:
Sensory approaches to material culture: theories and reality of the imagined sensorially-engaged Museum, in Christophilopoulou A. (ed), Material Cultures in Public Engagement: Re-inventing Public Archaeology within Museum Collections, Oxford, Oxbow, 2020.
Chapter 8: Catalogue of finds; Terracottas, The Fitzwilliam Museum, in Vassos Kara[1]georghis and Thomas Kiely (eds), Salamis-Toumba: An Iron Age sanctuary in Cyprus Rediscovered. Excavations of the Cyprus Exploration Fund, 1890, Part IV.
Codebreakers and Groundbreakers, from Linear B tablets to the Enigma machine, Minerva Magazine, Nov.-Dec. 2017, p. 46-50.
Re-examining the history of Cypriot antiquities in the Fitzwilliam Museum: a closerlook at the collection's past and future, in G. Bourogiannis and C. Muhlenbock eds., Ancient Cyprus Today: Museum Collections and New Research (SIMA pocket-book 184), Uppsala 2016, p.13 -19.
Does the Cretan house stand alone? Households in geometric Crete viewed in thecontext of domestic architecture in the Cyclades and the eastern Aegean, in W.-D. Niemeier, O.Pilz und I. Kaiser eds., Kreta in der geometrischen und archaischen Zeit. Akten des internationalen Kolloquiums am Deutschen Archaologischen Institut, Athenaia 2, Munchen 2013, 437-453.
Domestic Space and Community identity in the Aegean islands and Crete, MOSAIK journal, Raumdimensionen im Altertum, Berlin, 2010.
Publication
2022
2019 (No publication date)
2016 (Accepted for publication)
2021 (No publication date)
2019
2016
2021
2020
Doi: http://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.63185
2017
2019 (No publication date)
2017
Teaching and Supervisions
Anastasia has taught as a temporary lecturer in London (Birkbeck College) and has been a supervisor for Art and Archaeology in Cambridge since 2007. Anastasia also teaches for the Undergraduate Certificate in Archaeology of the Ancient World at ICE, as well as for the Ancient & Classical Worlds Summer programmes.
Anastasia currently advises 1 doctoral student in Mediterranean Archaeology, Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge (R. Laoutari, provisional thesis title: Social dynamics in non-urban societies: A multi-scalar analysis of social interaction in Prehistoric Bronze Age Cyprus') and she supervises another PhD student under the AHRC DTP (M. VonBechtolsheim, University of Cambridge/Open University, provisional thesis title: 'Ritual and Identity: British Collections of Bronze Figurines from First-Millennium-BC pre-Roman Italy').
Other Professional Activities
- Member of the Council of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies.
- Affiliated fellow, Center for Science and Policy (CSaP), University of Cambridge.
- Member of the management committee, Cambridge Centre for Greek Studies.
- Fellow and managing Committee member, Aegeus Society for Aegean prehistory
