Biography

Meira Gold is a historian of science, specialising in 19th century Egyptology. She is completing her PhD in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Meira previously obtained an Honours BA in Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations (2013) and an MA in Egyptology (2014) from the University of Toronto.

Her dissertation, ‘Mobilising the field in Victorian Egyptology, 1850-1906’, explores the emergence of archaeological fieldwork and field-recording practices in semi-colonial Egypt. She traces a crucial development in British Egyptology from an activity that could be practiced from London through a network of informants to one that required first-hand excavation experience. It is a project about the relationship between locality, expertise, and empire.

Meira’s research interests are in the circulation of archaeological knowledge in the 19th century, histories of fieldwork, collecting, recording, and visualization practices, race and gender in histories of Egyptology, and the disciplinary relationship between Egyptology and the natural and human sciences. She has published on the intersection between Egyptology, geology, and ethnology in mid-Victorian human antiquity disputes, and curated the exhibit ‘Conflicted Chronologies: Victorian Debates about Egyptian Prehistory’ at the Whipple Library, Cambridge. As a Max Weber Fellow, Meira plans to start developing her doctoral thesis into a book manuscript and writing an article for publication on ‘long-distance archaeology’.

In Cambridge, Meira supervised undergraduate courses on the history of science and medicine (c.1800-present), histories of evolution, science and empire, and anthropology (19th and early 20th centuries), and undergraduate research papers on Boasian anthropology.

Meira Gold is a historian of science, specialising in 19th century Egyptology. She is completing her PhD in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Meira previously obtained an Honours BA in Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations (2013) and an MA in Egyptology (2014) from the University of Toronto.

Her dissertation, ‘Mobilising the field in Victorian Egyptology, 1850-1906’, explores the emergence of archaeological fieldwork and field-recording practices in semi-colonial Egypt. She traces a crucial development in British Egyptology from an activity that could be practiced from London through a network of informants to one that required first-hand excavation experience. It is a project about the relationship between locality, expertise, and empire.

Meira’s research interests are in the circulation of archaeological knowledge in the 19th century, histories of fieldwork, collecting, recording, and visualization practices, race and gender in histories of Egyptology, and the disciplinary relationship between Egyptology and the natural and human sciences. She has published on the intersection between Egyptology, geology, and ethnology in mid-Victorian human antiquity disputes, and curated the exhibit ‘Conflicted Chronologies: Victorian Debates about Egyptian Prehistory’ at the Whipple Library, Cambridge. As a Max Weber Fellow, Meira plans to start developing her doctoral thesis into a book manuscript and writing an article for publication on ‘long-distance archaeology’.

In Cambridge, Meira supervised undergraduate courses on the history of science and medicine (c.1800-present), histories of evolution, science and empire, and anthropology (19th and early 20th centuries), and undergraduate research papers on Boasian anthropology.