Penn Museum Gets New Director

Archaeologist Richard Hodges began his new position as Williams Director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology on October 1, 2007.

The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology announced on August 28, 2007 the appointment of Richard Hodges as its new Williams Director. The former director of the United Kingdom's Institute of World Archaeology at the University of East Anglia began his position on October 1.

A classical and early medieval archaeologist specializing in western Europe, Dr. Hodges served as director of London's Prince of Wales Institute of Architecture and the British School in Rome as well as professor at Sheffield University. Archaeological and cultural heritage projects in Albania, including the creation of Tirana's large cultural history institute and Butrint's new archaeological museum, have occupied his time for the last nine years. Hodges was the 2005 Charles Eliot Norton Lecturer at the American Institute of Archaeology. As a board member of the Packard Humanities Institute in Palo Alto, California since 2003, he's supervised substantial archaeological projects in Greece, Italy, Turkey and Ukraine.

Dr. Hodges has written 10 books, more than 100 essays and pamphlets and edited 16 titles. Named an Officer of the British Empire in 1995, the subjects of his own books range from archaeology and early English society to towns and trade in the age of Charlemagne.

Richard Hodges earned his undergraduate degree in Archaeology and Medieval History (1973) and doctorate (1977) from Southhampton University; his thesis was on 8th- and 9th-century ceramics.