Barnard alum Irene Soto Marín accepted a joint position at the University of Michigan as Assistant Professor of Classical Studies and Assistant Curator at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. In addition to teaching, Irene’s responsibilities in this appointment will include working with the numismatic collection at the Kelsey and continuing her research on Late Roman economies.
Born and raised in Costa Rica, Irene received her B.A. from Barnard in Ancient Studies and Anthropology in 2010. During this time, she participated in the semester abroad excavations at Amheida in Egypt, where she first worked with Prof. Roger Bagnall and Prof. Ellen Morris (’91). She interned in the Egyptian Art Department at the Met during her junior year, assisting curator Marsha Hill (’72) and x-raying animal mummies, and received the Tow Fellowship for her senior thesis “Quarrying Stone and Tracing Graffiti: Religious Symbolism at Gebel Silsileh.” Irene went on to complete her Ph.D. at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at NYU in 2018 with a thesis titled “The Economic Integration of a Late Roman Province: Egypt from Diocletian to Anastasius.” During graduate school, she continues her connection to Barnard by TA’ing courses for Prof. Ellen Morris.
Irene joins the Michigan faculty after three years as a Visiting Assistant Professor and a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Ancient History at the University of Basel in Switzerland, where she leads a project measuring the monetary integration of Late Roman Egypt.
Kelsey Museum of Archaeology: https://lsa.umich.edu/kelsey
Department of Classical Studies: https://lsa.umich.edu/classics
Amheida: https://www.amheida.org/
Met work cases: https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/now-at-the-met/2016/egyptian-ptolemaic-art-installation
Barnard Tow Fellowship https://www.towfoundation.org/grant/tow-travel-study-fellowships/
Basel Ancient History: https://altegeschichte.philhist.unibas.ch/de/home/