Prof. Dr. Bethany J. Walker
University Address
Islamic Studies
Official Functions and Appointments
- Senior / Founding Editor of the Journal of Islamic Archaeology
- Member of the Board of the American Center of Reearch in Amman
About Me
I direct the Research Unit of Islamic Archaeology at the University of Bonn, serve as Co-Speaker of BIGS-IOA (where I also serve as peer group advisor to international students), and am a Principal Investigator in the Bonn Center of Dependency and Slavery Studies (a DFG-funded Excellence cluster). Outside the University of Bonn, I am active in numerous editing projects: I edit the Journal of Islamic Archaeology, co-edit Equinox Publishing’s Monographs in Islamic Archaeology, and serve on numerous international editorial boards. In addition to these, I am a long-term member of the Board of the American Center of Research in Amman (Jordan), and have served as liaison between American and Canadian archaeologists and the Jordanian Department of Antiquities. Over the years my role as a mentor to young scholars has become more important to me, and I have been active in supporting the careers of early career scholars. I am committed to promoting women in the sciences. My roles in publishing and editing, and directing field projects have been key in this regard. The joy of doing fieldwork and collaborative research: these are experiences I want to share with my students and encourage them to develop in their own work.
I am a historically-trained archaeologist, with specialization in medieval Islamic ceramics. I collaborate heavily with environmental scientists and botanists, in the study of historical land use.
I have recently been awarded a DFG grant for the landscape project TERRSOC: ‘Reading’ Ancient Landscapes (https://www.ioa.uni-bonn.de/isl/de/forschung/laufend). This project follows the recently completed, GIF-funded The Medieval Jerusalem Hinterland Project: A Multidisciplinary Landscape Study (now in final publication) and the DFG-funded Historische Landnutzung und Landschaftswandel in der Dekapolis-Region co-directed with Dr. Bernhard Lucke, where I was co-PI. In addition, I served as Co-Speaker of the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg of Mamluk Studies, a DFG-funded center for advanced studies at the University of Bonn.
For more information on my research, see: https://www.islamic-archaeology.uni-bonn.de/Associated%20Members/prof.-dr.-bethany-j.-walker.
I have sustained long-term interests the daily life of peasants in the medieval Levant: the relationships between small-scale communities and imperial Islamic states: traditional knowledge in natural resource management, peasant decision-making as regards land use, and agricultural sustainability.
Islamic Archaeology is a Research Unit in the Department of Islamic Studies. With the exception of one team-taught introductory course in my department, I teach primarily graduate-level courses. We have a Schwerpunkt in Islamic Archaeology on the MA level. For the last 8 years it has been offered in bi-lingual form, but from WiSe 2022-23 it will be English-language only. All of the MA courses – all are seminars - include hands-on training with artifacts from my own excavations (in Jordan and Israel), and are held in our lab on the second floor of Bruehler Strasse 7. The mode of instruction is quite varied, and I employ lecture format, traditional seminar, webinars and hybrid formats, practicums in the forms of excavations abroad, and lab work. All my of students have the opportunity to join my field projects in Jordan and Israel, and something is offered nearly every year (pandemic aside). Each year the modules offered are on a different theme from previous years. Aside from introductory courses in both Islamic archaeology and Islamic art, these have included such topics as Garbage, Recycling, and Living with Ruins: The Material Culture of the Kitchen: Problems of Coarsewares: Landscape Archaeology: Household Archaeology: Vernacular Architecture: Material Culture and Identity: Archaeology of Migration: Settlement Cycles: and Public Inscriptions and Graffiti. I am currently offering this semester a course on Islamic Historiography, as well, to introduce archaeology and art history majors to the use of texts. Some of these courses are also offered through the Webinar Initiative in Islamic Material Culture. My teaching grows out of my research, and has developed from 22 years of university teaching in the U.S. and Germany. What is most meaningful to me are courses that are interdisciplinary, and which push students to pull from all of their academic training (history, language, material culture studies), as well as topics that address contemporary issues from a historical perspective (migration, identity, gender relations, sustainability). I also teach PhD courses through BIGS-IOA. In my program, we currently have 18 PhD students, which is the fastest growing program in our Institute.
For more information about the MA curriculum, see: https://www.ioa.uni-bonn.de/isl/de/studium/ma/islamic-archaeology.
On the Webinar Initiative for Islamic Material Culture, see: https://www.islamic-material-culture.uni-hamburg.de/.