Dr Jacke Phillips

Dr Jacke Phillips is a specialist in the archaeology of Ethiopia, from prehistory to the medieval period. She spent five seasons as Assistant Director of the Aksum Archaeological Research Project for the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge.

Jacke Phillips began archaeological fieldwork on Crete, in 1981 then the Sudan in 1985, and Ethiopia in 1993. She spent five seasons as Assistant Director of the Aksum Archaeological Research Project for the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge. A Research Fellow at the Institute for a further decade, she is now a Visiting Scholar there and a Research Affiliate in the Centre of African Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She also helped plan and execute the new Aksum museum within the Ethiopian Heritage Conservation Project. Her current Ethiopian projects focuses on the 13th c. transition from the Zagwe to Solomonic dynasties in the Lalibela region and an Aksumite period cemetery with unusual grave goods. Her Sudanese fieldwork encompasses virtually all time periods., mostly along the southern Nile Valley but also Suakin on the Red Sea coast. Her academic work focuses on material typologies and cross-acculturations within the East Mediterranean, Northeast Africa, Red Sea and western Indian Ocean. She has published extensively on these subjects in national and international scholarly journals. Dr. Phillips is a frequent lecturer at conferences, universities and museums in Europe and North America.