We are delighted to welcome Dr. Melissa Cradic to the AAI / Open Context team as Digital Humanities Program Associate. In this new role, Melissa will manage and lead digital humanities workshops and seminars related to our organization’s recently awarded NEH Institute for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities and NSF FAIR Open Science grants over the next three years.
Melissa is an archaeologist and museum curator at the Badè Museum of Archaeology in Berkeley, CA. She is also Lecturer in History & Judaic Studies at the University at Albany, SUNY and teaches Anthropology at Sonoma State University. Her fieldwork, teaching, research, and museum work aims to increase accessibility of archaeological data, including legacy collections and museum archives. Her work focuses on creating inclusive narratives through multi-platform initiatives such as open-access programming, museum education programs, academic and public scholarship, and digital exhibitions. A specialist in mortuary archaeology of the Middle East, Melissa has published her research in venues such as BASOR, Near Eastern Archaeology, Levant, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports and has contributed to numerous edited volumes. In November of 2022, she and a curatorial colleague at the Badè Museum won the inaugural Community Engagement and Public Outreach Award from the American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR) for their work on a multi-platform project and web exhibition, Unsilencing the Archives: The Laborers of the Tell en-Nasbeh Excavations (1926-1935). In her role at the AAI / Open Context, Melissa will draw on her experience organizing and moderating public lectures, collaborating on field projects, developing curricula, managing collections and field data, and curating more than ten public exhibitions.
