Matthew Rutz is Assistant Professor of Egyptology and Ancient Western Asian Studies at Brown University. He works in the field of Assyriology, the interdisciplinary study of texts written in the cuneiform writing system from ancient Mesopotamia, specializing in the languages and cultures of this region with an emphasis on Akkadian (Babylonian/Assyrian) and Sumerian documents from the latter half of the second millennium BCE, the social and political history of Late Bronze Age Syria, and the study of ancient texts as archaeological objects.
Morag Kersel is Assistant Professor of Archaeology at DePaul University, Chicago. Her research interests include the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age of the eastern Mediterranean and Levant, cultural heritage protection, the built environment, object biographies, museums, and archaeological tourism. Her work combines archaeological, archival and oral history research in order to understand the efficacy of cultural heritage law in protecting archaeological landscapes from looting.