@wardengreg

P. Gregory Warden, Ph.D. is formerly President and Professor of Archaeology at Franklin University Switzerland, and current University Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Southern Methodist University and the Mark A. Roglàn Director of the Custard Institute for Spanish Art and Culture. He has written and lectured on archaeometallurgy, Roman architecture, Etruscan art and archaeology, ancient Mediterranean religion and ritual, and cultural heritage and preservation. He is Executive Editor of the Journal of Etruscan and Italic Studies, President of the Board of Trustees of the Etruscan Foundation, Consulting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, a former trustee of the Archaeological Institute of America, an International Fellow of the Explorers Club, and an elected member of the Istituto di Studi Etruschi e Italici.

Warden’s research and teaching have been supported by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is the Founding Director and Principal Investigator of the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project and excavations at Poggio Colla, an international consortium of seven universities. Warden also directed the Albagino Sacred Lake Archaeological Project (2017-2019) in the High Apennines. These research projects have been featured in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, in the European media, as well as on the Discovery Channel and in a 2010 documentary, Etruscan Odyssey, Expanding Archaeology.

@CastellodiPotentino

Charlotte Horton has been making award-winning wines in Tuscany for over 20 years. She has restored two Castles in Tuscany. At Castello di Potentino, she has revitalized an abandoned estate, planting new vineyards, bringing back olive trees into production and recreating the castle as a cultural centre and a bed and breakfast. She has been running food and wine pop-up events in London, Italy, Ireland and France since 2010.

Before moving to Italy, she worked for Vogue Magazine, Secker and Warburg Publishing House and then as a freelance journalist. In 2013, she was recognized as one of the Barclay’s Women of Achievement. She has recently published the book 'A Tuscan Adventure: Castello di Potentino:The Restoration of a Castle' with photographer Michael Woolley with Rizzoli NY.

@grove_archaeologist

Meryl Shriver-Rice, Ph.D., RPA, is an environmental archaeologist and anthropologist in the department of Human Ecology at Rutgers University. She is a board member of the Allying for Diversity and Inclusion in Ethnobiology (ADIE) and founding editor of the Journal of Environmental Media. She is also Principal Investigator of the Coastal Heritage at Risk Task Force (CHART) project which builds regional partnerships to recognize the vulnerabilities of community heritage assets to the impacts of climate change. CHART seek to inform local communities of best practices when undertaking steps to preserve and protect historic and archaeological sites.

She has published on Etruscan archaeobotany, local ecological knowledge (LEK), Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR), landscape archaeology, relational values, digital practices by museums and heritage sites, and the role of environmental archaeology in contemporary conservation. Her co-authored book with Dr. Sarah Hiepler, Decolonial Approaches to Data Ethics and Re-Storying: Tracking Biodiversity and Archiving the Dead is contract with Wiley-Blackwell.

@DrHunterVaughan (Twitter)

Hunter Vaughan is Senior Research Associate at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, University of Cambridge, focusing on environmental media, digital infrastructures, science communication, and social justice. Dr. Vaughan teaches Science, Media & Storytelling in Switzerland (Franklin University).

Dr. Vaughan is the author of Where Film Meets Philosophy (2013) and co-editor of the Anthem Handbook of Screen Theory (2018). His most recent book, Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret: the Hidden Environmental Costs of the Movies (2019) offers an environmental counter-narrative to the history of mainstream film culture and explores the environmental ramifications of the recent transition to digital technologies and practices. He was a 2017 Rachel Carson Center Fellow and is a founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Environmental Media . He is currently Co-Principal Investigator for the Global Green Media Network (AHRC) and Co-PI on the Sustainable Subsea Networks (Internet Society Foundation) project.

@PhPerkins (Twitter)

Phil Perkins, Ph.D., Professor of Archaeology, Department of Classical Studies, The Open University (UK). His research career started in Tuscany in the Albegna Valley /Ager Cosanus field survey where he studied and published Etruscan settlements and material culture, including the first-ever excavation of an Etruscan farm site at Podere Tartuchino that remains the only Etruscan farm to be both excavated and fully published. Subsequently, he published the Etruscan bucchero ceramics in the British Museum before joining the excavation project at Poggio Colla where he is publishing the bucchero.

In 2016 he held the Hugh Last Fellowship at the British School at Rome, extending his research into northern Etruria and the Apennines in the first Millennium BCE. Recently, he has published in open access the first wholistic study of pithoi in central Italy and their relationship to agricultural intensification and economic growth at the start of the Archaic period. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Etruscan and Italic Studies.

Eleanor Betts, Ph.D. Senior Lecturer, Department of Classical Studies, The Open University (UK). Her research investigates urbanism and religion in Roman and Iron Age Italy (primarily Picenum - modern Marche and North Abruzzo), with an emphasis on the interrelationships between the human body, material culture and architecture. Particularly, questions of individual and group identities, and the concepts and use of space. This is all underpinned by sensory studies; specifically, the development and application of multisensory approaches to understanding people's construction, experience and use of urban and ritual space, and phenomenological approaches to ancient Italic sacred landscapes.

She has worked on a number of archaeological fieldwork projects in Italy, including the Tavoliere-Gargano Prehistory Project and Albagino Sacred Lake Project. She is a founding member of the Sensory Studies in Antiquity network and a member of the advisory board for the series Studies in Roman Space and Urbanism. In 2017 she published the edited volume Senses of the Empire: Multisensory Approaches to Roman Culture.

Phillip Mendenhall, M.A., RPA, is a Research Fellow at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pittsburgh. Phillip also directs military service member recovery missions for the Department of POW/MIA Accountability Agency in Honolulu, and is a board member for the Arkhaios Cultural Heritage and Archaeology Conference in Pittsburgh.

Phillip’s research is focused on colonial interaction with indigenous populations by understanding how communities of practice form to maintain localized ceramic production methods. Phillip focuses his research in two major regions, the Greek-speaking colonial period in southeastern Europe, and the Early to Middle Woodland Periods of the North American Eastern Woodlands. His comparative approach is helping to develop community-based research methods at the Center for Comparative Archaeology, Pittsburgh, and the Grave Creek Archaeological Complex, Moundsville, West Virginia. He worked on research projects at the Butrint site, Albania; Apollonia Pontica, Bulgaria; Kale-Krševica, Serbia; Chersonesos, Crimea (Ukraine); and the Northeastern US since 2004. Phillip is a member of the Western Band of the Cherokee Nation and serves his community through various events sponsored by the Council of Three Rivers American Indian Center in Pittsburgh.

Holley Soro is an archaeologist, former teacher, and third-year returner from PXP. She has a BFA in Drawing from the University of Georgia. After completing the Potentinto Exploration Project field school she has been working as an archaeological technician in cultural resource management in south Florida for the Archaeological and Historical Conservancy, where she has acted as a block boss and has put her drawing skills to use as a member of the mapping team.

For the past two years, she has been working at (and will be returning to) the downtown Miami site that is currently being considered for heritage preservation by the City of Miami due to pressure by local communities, including the Miccosukee and Seminole Tribes of Florida, academics from the University of Miami, City and County archaeologists, and local preservation experts.

Dr. Terri Hood is retired Senior Lecturer of Marine Geosciences, and currently adjunct faculty in the Department of Marine Geosciences, University of Miami. A theme that runs through Hood’s research and teaching career is the study of human-environment interactions. A decade of early research focused on assessing historical human impacts in coastal oceans using geochemical and microfaunal signatures archived in the sediment record.

She spent the last 17 years co-directing the University of Miami Ecosystem Science & Policy undergraduate program since its inception in 2005 through 2022. Hood has led or co-led field courses studying human-environment interactions in the following countries: Iceland, Greenland, Norway, Sweden, England, Portugal, Ecuador, Canada, and multiple locations in the United States (Florida, Texas, Nevada, California, Arizona, Utah, Texas, Hawaii). In these different combinations of environment and culture, of particular focus was the effect of geology on the human experience.

Karen Herrero Backe is an interdisciplinary scientist and currently a doctoral student at the University of Miami’s Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy. Her current mixed- methods research investigates actionable strategies for building equity and diversity in STE(A)M through culturally sustaining storytelling, heritage connections, and digital interactive experiences.

Karen’s prior research background is in biogeography, particularly marine and coastal climate change. She holds an MS in Marine Science from the Estuary and Ocean Science Center at San Francisco State University. Prior to her doctoral studies, she engaged in field operations and research around the world. She has held positions managing science communications for environmental non-profits; developing public interpretation with the National Park Service; researching and modeling coastal climate change impacts on salt marsh ecology with the United States Geological Survey; co-facilitating DEI training; and teaching formal and informal science education classes and programs from elementary through college levels. Karen is also a writer, skilled scuba diver, and sustainable farmer.