A professor of ancient art history and a classical archaeologist, Prof. Jenifer Neils is an expert on the ancient Mediterranean. An indefatigable lecturer and traveler, she has served as study leader for more than a dozen trips to ancient sites across the Mediterranean, from North Africa to Turkey. Prof. Neils traveled extensively throughout Crete, the Greek islands, and mainland Greece in her role as the first woman Director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (2017-2022).
After earning her Ph.D. at Princeton, Prof. Neils regularly taught courses in ancient art and archaeology from the Bronze Age to Late Antiquity at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, where she held two endowed chairs. She has also been a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University. During the 2011-12 academic year Prof. Neils was the Joukowsky Lecturer for the AIA.
As a museum curator, Professor Neils has organized three highly acclaimed international loan exhibitions, one dealing with the worship of Athena in Athens, one on childhood in antiquity, and most recently a show on horsemanship in ancient Athens (2021). She has also published 15 books ranging from the history of ceramics to the Parthenon. Her latest are Women in the Ancient World (British Museum) and HIPPOS: The Horse in Ancient Athens, as well as a children’s book entitled AVRA: An Amazing Greek Horse. As a field archaeologist, Prof. Neils has participated in excavations in northern Italy, Sicily, and Greece; and has been granted prestigious fellowships at the American Academy in Rome, the J. Paul Getty Research Center, and the Paul Mellon Center at Yale.
Chair of Art History and Classics at Case Western Reserve University
