Alexandra Villing

Dr Alexandra Villing is a classical archaeologist and curator at the British Museum’s Department of Ancient Greece and Rome, with special responsibility for Greek pottery and the Archaic and Classical Greek world. She has long been involved in excavations in Turkey, at ancient Miletos and Knidos, and currently directs a research and fieldwork project on the Greek-Egptian trading port of Naukratis in the Nile Delta, www.britishmuseum.org/naukratis. For the British Museum she has curated an exhibition on ‘Fantastic Creatures’ in world cultures, shown in Korea and Hong Kong. Having published widely on Greek pottery, votive offerings, religion and iconography as well as relations between Greece, Persia, Anatolia and Egypt, she is especially interested in the role of material culture in cross-cultural contact zones and in the construction of social identities. A strong believer in collaboration between humanities and sciences, some of her recent work includes research with Michela Spataro on the social and technological aspects of Greek ‘coarse ware’ pottery. She is currently preparing publications on Archaic pottery from Miletos and on Greek-Egyptian relations at Naukratis.