With a few days delay – having just returned from Egypt – it’s my great pleasure to introduce a new team member of AcrossBorders: Johannes Auenmüller joined the project with October 1. I am especially delighted, knowing him since many years from Berlin and because Johannes brings much experience in settlement archaeology, having been a member of the mission at Elephantine Island and currently working also at Amara West.

Johannes will soon introduce his work on this blog, but here are some brief information about his vita: he studied Egyptology, Classical Archaeology and Proto- and Prehistoric Archaeology at Free University Berlin. Johannes obtained his master’s degree with a study about the sociology of Egyptian elite tomb imagery in the Old Kingdom. He was then awarded a scholarship of the Berlin Cluster of Excellence TOPOI for his doctoral dissertation that aims at describing and understanding the territoriality and space-related identity of the Egyptian elite of the New Kingdom. Afterwards he conducted archaeological and archaeometric research funded by the Fritz-Thyssen-Stiftung on a unique object ensemble of casting moulds for producing god’s figures of bronze at the Egyptian Museum of Bonn University. Since April 2015 he is Research Associate at the Institute of Egyptology and Coptology of Münster University where he is responsible for the coordination of the research centre ‘Old Sudan‘. In the context of his position within AcrossBorders he will be working on the New Kingdom prosopography of Sai and environs.

Johannes also held several lectureships at the universities of Berlin, Leipzig and Bonn. Alongside his long-run archaeological work in Austria, he was moreover member of the excavation teams at Elephantine Island and Dahshur in Egypt. At present, his archaeological work focuses on the pharaonic town Amara West in Sudan where he is member of the excavation project of the British Museum London.

We are all delighted to welcome Johannes as new team member of AcrossBorders in Munich and are much looking forward to a fruitful collaboration.