JODI MAGNESS

Jodi Magness (www.JodiMagness.org) is a member of the American Academy of Arts and  Sciences (category of Philosophy and Religious Studies). She 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,  Magness 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 1990-1992, Magness  was Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in Syro-Palestinian Archaeology at the Center for Old World  Archaeology and Art at Brown University. 
Three of Magness’ books have won awards: her most recent book, Masada: From Jewish Revolt  to Modern Myth (Princeton: Princeton University, 2019), was selected as a finalist for the 2019  National Jewish Book Award in the category of History, the Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial  
Award. The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,  2002; revised edition 2021) 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; and 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. Her other books include The 2003-2007  Excavations in the Late Roman Fort at Yotvata (co-authored with G. Davies) (Winona Lake, IN:  Eisenbrauns, 2015); The Archaeology of the Holy Land from the Destruction of Solomon’s  Temple to the Muslim Conquest (New York: Cambridge University, 2012); and Stone and Dung,  Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011). In  addition, Magness has published dozens of articles in journals and edited volumes. Her research  interests, which focus on Palestine in the Roman, Byzantine, and early Islamic periods, and  Diaspora Judaism in the Roman world, include ancient pottery, ancient synagogues, Jerusalem,  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 she co directed excavations in the late Roman fort at Yotvata, Israel. Since 2011, Magness has directed  excavations at Huqoq in Galilee (www.huqoq.org). 
Magness received a 2016-2017 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Public Scholar  Award for work on Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth. For 2021-2022, she was  awarded a Kingdon Fellowship at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University  of Wisconsin-Madison, a Fulbright Israel Senior Scholar Award at Tel Aviv University, and the  Gitin Professorship at the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, to  support research on Jerusalem Through the Ages (under contract with Oxford University Press).  Magness’ other awards include a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies  and a fellowship in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. (1997-98); 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 (2000-2001); a Fulbright  Lecturing Award through the United States-Israel Educational Foundation at the Institute of  Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (spring 2005); a fellowship at the School for  Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ (2007-2008); and a  Chapman Family Faculty Fellowship at the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at the  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2010-2011). She has been invited to deliver the  2022 Schweich Lectures in Biblical Archaeology for the British Academy. 
In 2008 Magness received a national teaching honor: the Archaeological Institute of America’s  Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. She produced a 36-lecture course on “The  Holy Land Revealed” (released December 2010), and a 24-lecture course on “Jesus and His  Jewish Influences” (released December 2015) with The Teaching Company’s Great Courses.  Magness consulted for and is featured in the National Geographic giant screen film Jerusalem,  which premiered in September 2013 (http://www.jerusalemthemovie.com/). Magness also  consulted for and appeared in the National Geographic series, The Story of God with Morgan  Freeman, which aired in spring 2016. 
Magness is past President of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) (Jan. 2017-Jan. 2020).  She is a member of the Managing Committee of the American School of Classical Studies at  Athens, and has 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  AIA, and the Board of Trustees of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Magness has served as President of the North Carolina Society of the AIA and the Boston Society of the AIA.