Photo of Dr Marina Escolano Poveda

Dr Marina Escolano Poveda Lic., PhD, Fulbright Scholar, FAvH

Senior Lecturer in Classics/Ancient History and Egyptology Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology

About

Personal Statement

Marina Escolano-Poveda is a Senior Lecturer in Classics/Ancient History and Egyptology at the Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology of the University of Liverpool. She holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies (Egyptology, with minor in Ancient Greek) from the Johns Hopkins University, 2017. She started her doctoral studies in the United States as a Fulbright Scholar. Before this she had completed a 5-year Licenciatura in History (equivalent to a British BA + 2-year MA) at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, being awarded at its completion the First Place National Award of Excellence in Undergraduate Academic Performance, Class of 2009 (Primer Premio Nacional de Fin de Carrera, Promoción de 2009). From 2018 to 2021 she worked as full-time fixed-term Lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Liverpool. In 2019, she became a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (FAvH), with a research project on the Graeco-Egyptian Hermetica at the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen (host: Prof. Dr. Christian Leitz). She spent the academic year 2021–22 as full-time permanent Lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Manchester. In 2022, she returned to the University of Liverpool as permanent Lecturer in Classics/Ancient History and Egyptology, and she has been promoted to Senior Lecturer in the 2023 Academic Annual Review by the Faculty Review Committee for Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Liverpool.

Her research focuses on the literature, religion, philosophy, and society of Graeco-Roman Egypt. She is particularly interested in the study of the intellectual milieu of the Egyptian temples of the Graeco-Roman period, and the role of the Egyptian priesthood in the creation and transmission of knowledge in the Ancient and Late Antique worlds. Within this research area, she currently works on the analysis of Graeco-Egyptian astronomical/astrological and early alchemical sources, as well as the Greek Hermetica from an Egyptological perspective. She is also involved in the edition of papyri and ostraca from different international collections. She is part of the project "Traditions of Magical Knowledge. The Papyrus Magical Handbooks in Context" of the University of Chicago, which is preparing a new edition of the Graeco-Egyptian magical formularies. She is also part of the Athribis-Projekt of the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen as specialist in astronomy/astrology, in which she is editing newly discovered Demotic astrological texts.

She combines her philological work with fieldwork in Egypt since 2007. She was a member of the Egypt Exploration Society/Durham University archaeological expedition to Saïs (Sa el-Hagar, Egypt) between 2007 and 2010. From 2011 to 2018 she was part of the team of the Johns Hopkins University archaeological expedition to the Mut Temple at Karnak (Luxor, Egypt), where she worked as trench supervisor and archaeological illustrator. She also has extensive archaeological experience in Spain, having worked in sites from prehistoric to medieval times.

Prizes or Honours

  • Teacher of the Year – Humanities and Social Sciences. Nominated (University of Liverpool Guild of Students, 2023)
  • Premio BTI-Manuel Iradier al Proyecto Científico (Sociedad Geográfica La Exploradora, 2020)
  • Teacher of the Year – Humanities and Social Sciences. Shortlisted (University of Liverpool Guild of Students, 2019)

Funded Fellowships

  • Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, 2019 - 2021)