Dr. Hilary Gopnik

Biography

Hilary Gopnik is a Near Eastern archaeologist who specializes in the study of Iron Age Iran and the South Caucasus, with a focus on the Medes and the Zagros Mountains. Currently, she is the Director of the Centre for Ancient Cultures at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Gopnik received her BA in Anthropology from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and both her MA and PhD in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Toronto. Her doctoral research centered on Godin Tepe, an archaeological site firmly identified with the Medes in Iran dating from the 8th to the 6th century BCE. In 2008, she shifted her archaeological focus in Iran northwards to Naxçivan in Azerbaijan, co-directing excavations of the Iron Age citadel site Oğlanqala, which was funded by the National Science Foundation (USA). In the summer of 2013, her project began work at a nearby site called Qizqala, which has a settlement occupation lasting 2,000 years from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. In 2016, she returned to Iran to serve as a ceramicist for the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France) as part of a landscape archaeology project in the region of Cyrus, particularly at the great site of Pasargadae. Gopnik has received a 4-year ARC Discovery Project Grant to continue her study of Iron Age Median polities in Northwestern Iran.

Research Interests

Experience