The 2026 PoCA committee is incredibly excited to welcome Dr. Artemis Georgiou as this year’s keynote speaker. Dr. Georgiou is a renowned Cypriot archaeologist currently working as an Assistant Research Professor with the Archaeological Research Unit at the University of Cyprus (UCY). While this short announcement cannot do her justice, the brief summary below provides a glimpse into her prolific career:

• BA, Department of History and Archaeology, UCY

• Master’s and PhD from the University of Oxford

• Postdoctoral Marie Sklodowska Curie Career Integration Grant for the research project ‘ARIEL’, conducted at UCY – 2013-2017

• UCY internal Research and Teaching fellowship – 2018-2020

• Edgar Peltenburg Postdoctoral Fellow for Cypriot Prehistory at the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute (CAARI) – 2020-2021

• Collaborator on many archaeology missions, analyzing their pottery. These projects include: the Palaepaphos Urban Landscape Project; the Kalavasos and Maroni Built Environment Project; and, the French Mission at Kition (plus a number of others)

Currently, Dr. Georgiou is leading an incredibly exciting project: “Commercial Patterns Across the Sea: The interdisciplinary study of Maritime Transport Containers from Cyprus and the elucidation of Mediterranean connectivity during the Late Bronze Age-Early Iron Age” (or ComPAS for short).

This project explores the commercial and cultural networks which connected the eastern Mediterranean in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages (roughly 1650-750 BC), focusing specifically on Maritime Transport Containers (MTC) to do so. The pioneering work of ComPAS combines interdisciplinary methods to approach MTCs in a holistic manner, examining morphology, provenance, marking strategies, secondary deposition practices, and many other elements of these artifacts. Check out the link in our bio for more information about ComPAS and its principal researcher!

Want to know what Dr. Georgiou will be talking about at PoCA this year? Well, stay tuned for that big announcement in May. In the meantime, please use your own cultural (ie. personal, professional, academic) networks to share all things PoCA. And don’t forget the deadline for abstract submissions is coming up!