Prof. Dr Vanessa Boschloos is guest professor of the research unit Mediterranean Archaeology in the Department of Archaeology, where she was postdoctoral assistant for the research unit Archaeology of the Ancient Near East between 2016 and 2020. In addition to research and teaching on the archaeology and art history of the ancient Mediterranean, Western Asia and North Africa, she also participated in the department's excavations in Cyprus, with colleague Prof. Joachim Bretschneider. She currently directs the excavations at the Quarter of Gate II at Agrigento, Sicily (ancient Akragas) with Ronaldo Gurgel Pereira of NOVA University of Lisbon.
She received her Master degree in Archaeology and Art Studies at the Free University of Brussels (V.U.B.), where she also completed the Academic Teacher Training Programme. In 2012, she obtained her PhD at the V.U.B. with a dissertation entitled "Study of the relations between the ancient Near East and Egypt: The geochronological distribution of scarab-shaped seals in the northern Levant (Syria and Lebanon) from the late 3rd millennium to the late Iron Age".
She also holds a university degree in Provenance research from the University of Paris Nanterre, Recherche de provenances des oeuvres: Circulations, spoliations, trafics illicites et restitutions and is co-founder and General Secretary of the first francophone association for provenance researchers, CPRProvenances.
As a researcher in the departments Pharaonic Egypt and Ancient Near East and Iran at the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels from 2005 to 2017, Vanessa Boschloos participated in the museum’s archaeological missions to Syria and Lebanon and was involved in several national and international research projects and networks funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office BELSPO.
From the end of 2017 to early 2021 she was the first Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Curatorial Research fellow / Colections Specialist at the Department of Egyptian Art of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in 2019 a Henri Frankfort fellow at the Warburg Institute of the University of London.
Her research pertains to intercultural contacts and exchanges in Antiquity, more specifically on the cultures and societies in Western Asia and the Mediterranean world during the 2nd and early 1st millennium BC. She also studies the impact of the archaeology and art of these regions on modern and contemporary popular culture and art.
Another focal point are Levantine and Phoenician archaeology, which she also teaches in Ghent. In addition, she contributes to the Corpus of Phoenician and Punic Antiquities (International Union of Academies, Project 44) as researcher and scientific secretary of its Belgian committee.
In the publishing business she works as editor of the assyriological journal Akkadica (WoS) and is editor-in-chief of the OA journal ARWA (Brill publishers), the flagship journal of the first international Association for Archaeological Research in Western and Central Asia.
Vanessa Boschloos also serves as vice-president on the board of the BABESCH Foundation (Amsterdam) and on the executive board of the International Association for Archaeological Research in Western and Central Asia.
She is member of the Belgian Committee of the Blue Shield and serves as assistant manager of its permanenet secretariat, conducting research and developing tools for crisis managment (first aid) and emergency evacuation; developing awareness raising campaigns for emergency preparedness and the fight against illicite trafficking of cultural property; promoting and supporting preventive measures to protect and saveguard heritage; providing teaching and training in academic and non-academic environments; and coordinating operational aspects of the NGO.
