Elisabeth R. O’Connell is Byzantine World Curator at The British Museum. Her research focuses on aspects of social history and archaeology in Late Antique Egypt. She is editor of Egypt in the First Millennium AD (2014), Abydos in the First Millennium AD (2020), Egypt and empire: The formation of religious identity after Rome (2022) and co-editor of Egypt: Faith after the pharaohs (2015), which accompanied the BM exhibition of the same title (2015–2016). She has excavated in Tunisia, Sudan and Egypt, where she co-directed the British Museum Expedition to Hagr Edfu (2009-2013). She received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley (2007).