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Leire Olabarria

@leireolabarria.bsky.social
269 followers 89 following 106 posts

Associate Professor in Egyptology at the University of Birmingham

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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
We had a blast at the 8th Ibero-American Congress of Egyptologists in Barcelona earlier this week! Is that yours truly with a pic of Deleuze and Guattari on the slide? I'm afraid that's right!
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Today is the day. I am starting a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship to critically reconsider the idea of cultural survivals and the role it has played in the construction of Egyptological knowledge. It is *very* daunting and at the same time incredibly exciting. Wish me luck!
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Please consider submitting an abstract if you haven't done so already. The deadline is this Friday ☺️
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
I can't be the one who really struggles to update and keep track of so many platforms and academic repositories. Bluesky, LinkedIn, Academia, Orcid, Pure... The list keeps growing, and it is frankly overwhelming! How do you do it?
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Gentle reminder that the call for papers for this workshop is still open until mid-August ☺️
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Just a few days left to apply for this one-year post!
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Fantastic start to a week packed with research events supported by BRIHC with a conference on conferences. Can it get any more meta than that? Amazing keynote by @lauracforster.bsky.social with a focus of the experience of organising and attending conferences and the power dynamics involved
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
It has cooled down significantly today, so it's a beautiful day on campus. Come along to the Mason Lounge in the Arts Building if you want to learn about our programmes in Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology!
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
🚨JOB ALERT🚨 Teaching Fellow in Egyptology at the University of Birmingham Full time, fixed-term contract from 1 September 2026 to 31 August 2027 Application deadline: 6 July www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRX646/t...
jobs.ac.uk
Teaching Fellow in Egyptology at University of Birmingham
An opportunity for an academic position as a Teaching Fellow in Egyptology is available, as advertised on jobs.ac.uk. Apply now and explore other academic job openings.
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Alice Stevenson @alicestevenson.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Opportunity to join our teaching team in Museum Studies. Full time, permanent contract - Lecturer (Teaching) www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
ucl.ac.uk
UCL – University College London
UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
So proud of my wonderful PhD student Liv, who was first runner-up in the 126 seconds presentation challenge organised as part of our College's Research Festival today! Well done, Liv!!!
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
🚨Call for Papers 🚨 Connecting with the Past: Cultural Survivals and Ethnographic Comparison in the Study of Ancient Societies 📖 Interdisciplinary workshop, University of Birmingham (UK), 12-13 November 2026 ❗Deadline for abstracts 14 August 2026 Submission form: forms.office.com/e/DbAM3hmgiF
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
We have enjoyed sharing #EgyptologyinDialogue with you all over the past few weeks! We hope it has offered food for thought in exploring the role of theory in Egyptology, particularly as concerns discussions of the body #EgyptologyInDialogue
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Uroš Matić (Priv.-Doz.Dr) @urosmatic.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
We are grateful to all contributors and to Oxbow team and their enormous effort invested in this publication! We hope that it will inspire scholars also outside history and archaeology, especially concerning methodologies and thinking about war in relational way. #archaeology #war
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
What potential does the dialogue between anthropology and Egyptology hold? Rather than follow a traditional import-export model, trading ready-made theories between disciplines, the afterword by Matei Candea examines the place of comparison and defamiliarization. #EgyptologyInDialogue
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The Egypt Exploration Society @theees.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
🚨📢 LAST TICKETS LEFT for our screening of The Mummy (1999) on Wednesday! #EESFest Join us at The Garden Cinema for an evening of Hollywood bingo, as we watch a movie that defined the interests of a whole generation of budding Egyptologists. Book now: www.ees.ac.uk/whats-on/eve...
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
What can a pastiche Middle Kingdom boat tell us about body worlds? @emilywhitehead.bsky.social takes a model solar boat as a case study to illustrate how the notion of body worlds can help us make sense of the complex biography of this object. #EgyptologyInDialogue
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
Can embodied cognition help us overcome the conventional mind/body bias? By focusing on the doer rather than on what was done, Wendrich proposes a chaîne opératoire approach to rediscover the ancient Egyptian body as an active, sensory participant in its environment. #EgyptologyInDialogue
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
How did the ancient Egyptians conceptualise nakedness? Through texts from a wide range of genres and across two millennia, Serova analyses lexemes related to this semantic field. She uses [EXPOSURE] as a case study to demonstrate how semantic networks can be visualised. #EgyptologyInDialogue
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
How do foreign goddesses change when they are imported into the Egyptian pantheon? @edwardscrivens.bsky.social uses Sørensen’s notion of gender negotiation to interpret the intersections of gender and foreignness in Egyptian representations of Qadesh, Astarte, and Anat. #EgyptologyInDialogue
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
Our PGR community event is always one of the highlights of the year! This time we had panels on PGR funding, academic posters and alternative career pathways. Thanks to the organisers and the speakers for such a stimulating discussion!
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
What is the relationship between kinship and bodies in ancient Egypt? Olabarria (yours truly!) shows that we cannot take our intuitive distinction between nature and nurture for granted and uses the notion of body worlds to shed light on the Egyptian category of ‘bodily son’. #EgyptologyInDialogue
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Another wonderful Birmingham Egyptology Symposium this year! PhD students from all over the world came to Birmingham in person and virtually to share their exciting research with us. Thanks to my PGRs who keep working hard behind the scenes to make this possible. Pic from the poster session below.
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Uroš Matić (Priv.-Doz.Dr) @urosmatic.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Trying out Kudos as a feature of @degruyterbrill.bsky.social to communicate my research to a broader audience 🧠 Hope it inspires people to read it and think about ideological background of class and ontological distinctions in #ancientEgypt link.growkudos.com/1eqi0q439q8 #egyptology #archaeology
link.growkudos.com
Divine nature of pharaoh's violence in war
Using textual and visual sources from ancient Egypt, this work demonstrates that the violence conducted by the pharaoh in war was conceptualized as the violence conducted by ancient Egyptian deities t...
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The Egypt Exploration Society @theees.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
‘Preserving’ Egyptian Heritage: A Tale as Old as Time? Our hybrid Study Day unpacks historical efforts to preserve Egypt’s heritage as well as the concept of ‘preservation’, what has been preserved, for whom, and why. 📅 Saturday 27 June 2026 🎫 £15-£40 for #EESFest! ℹ️ www.ees.ac.uk/whats-on/eve...
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Can we use comparison to align ancient Egyptian body and image concepts more closely with current anthropological frameworks? #EgyptologyInDialogue
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
As much as I like Bluesky, I have a major gripe with it and that is that @ncrenic.bsky.social is not as active here. I need my daily dose of academic banter!
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Did the ancient Egyptians really understand the human body as inherently fragmented? Di Biase-Dyson revisits the old Egyptological theory of the ‘fragmented body’ and the related framework of ‘aspective’ with a critical lens, exposing its underlying evolutionist and racist ideas.
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
The ancient Egyptians usually took great care in differentiating between men, women, and others, and some of them even sought to determine the quintessential question, is the child male or female?
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NINO Leiden @nino-leiden.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
Coming up on the 15th of May 2026 are the application deadlines for the following NINO grants: - Conference Subsidy - Incoming and Outgoing Mobility Grants - Visiting Research Fellowship For more information and applications, see buff.ly/N0COD2T. #ninoleiden
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The Egypt Exploration Society @theees.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
You're invited to our EES Fest throughout June! To celebrate the Society's history and look towards the future, we'll be hosting a festival of events before our premises transform into a new centre for Egyptian cultural heritage. ℹ️ www.ees.ac.uk/resource/ees...
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
What a privilege to have @profdanhicks.bsky.social and @corinnefowler.bsky.social with us at @unibirmingham.bsky.social today. It was a thought-provoking conversation about reshaping memory culture and staying with the fragments
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
What happens if we change the scale and specificity when posing questions about ancient Egyptian bodies? Bussmann discusses results of fieldwork at Zawyet Sultan with a focus on non-elite populations to explore questions of social and physical relatedness. #EgyptologyInDialogue
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
This free in-person event with @profdanhicks.bsky.social and @corinnefowler.bsky.social is happening tomorrow! Join us in this conversation about memory, heritage, and colonialism
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
The question is not what an ancient Egyptian body is but, rather, what can an ancient Egyptian body do? In this commentary, @ojth.bsky.social explores the potential of archaeological and philosophical theories to redefine our understanding of ancient Egyptian bodies #EgyptologyInDialogue
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
What does it mean to be in dialogue? In what ways can Egyptology constructively engage with other disciplines? This introduction brings Egyptology in dialogue with archaeological and anthropological theory by presenting four key concepts, namely body worlds, relations, comparisons, and negotiation.
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
Check out the open access special issue of Interdisciplinary Egyptology, titled "Egyptology in dialogue: Historical bodies in relations, comparisons, and negotiations". #EgyptologyInDialogue journals.univie.ac.at/index.php/in...
journals.univie.ac.at
Vol. 2 No. 2 (2025): Egyptology in Dialogue: Historical bodies in relations, comparisons, and negotiations (Interdisciplinary Egyptology Special Issue 2) | Interdisciplinary Egyptology
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
I know it is tricky to keep track of announcements on here, so reposting in case anyone is interested!
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The Egypt Exploration Society @theees.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Online Course: Sacred Landscapes of Ancient Egypt 📅 Starting TOMORROW ⏰ 6-7:30pm 🇬🇧 Steven Snape will present a series of key ancient Egyptian monuments which reflect a sophisticated merging of myth, the natural world, and innovative architecture. 🎫 www.ees.ac.uk/whats-on/eve...
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Horus the Elder 𓅃𓅨𓂋 ♿ @horusofnekhen.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
On Thursday May 7th, I'll be delivering the final lecture in @arf-ucb.bsky.social's Lecture Series on Disability in the Ancient Middle East and Mediterranean. I'll be aiming to give a concise overview on our evidences for disability in Ancient Egypt, and the interesting questions they give us. 1/2
Poster for Kyle's talk on Disability in Ancient Egypt, happening on May 7th 2026 at 9:30am PDT / 5:30pm BST. On the left is a picture of Kyle sitting in front of an Egyptian shrine smiling, and on the right is an ancient Egyptian wall tile decorated with a fragmented image of the god Bes. In the bottom left corner is a QR code for the Zoom link.
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
Birmingham-based peeps, there are still tickets available for this in-person event organised by BRIHC at @unibirmingham.bsky.social! A unique opportunity to hear @profdanhicks.bsky.social reflect on his work on heritage, memory and conflict in conversation with @corinnefowler.bsky.social
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
With apologies to my non-Spanish speaking colleagues, this seminar on intersectionality is happening next week. Seminario online sobre enfoques interseccionales en arqueología funeraria del Reino Medio organizado por el IHAO, Universidad de Buenos Aires. Jueves, 23 de abril, 5pm (GMT-3)
Seminar poster showing talk details and an image of a funerary model
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NINO Leiden @nino-leiden.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
Materiality and Historical Research: A Postgraduate Workshop. Monday 20 April 2026, 13:00-17:00. Short presentations by PhD candidates on a single object, or group of objects, that can demonstrate the importance of materiality in historical research. All are welcome to attend!
Poster text: Materiality and Historical Research: A Postgraduate Workshop
With the support of the Leiden–Birmingham Strategic Collaboration Fund
Monday 20th April 2026, 13:00-17:00
Herta Mohr 
HMO 1.30 (KITLV seminar room)
Refreshments will be provided 
This workshop will be followed by an evening reception
Logos of Leiden University and University of Birmingham
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Dan Hicks @profdanhicks.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
💥 I'm delighted to announce that I'll be giving the 2027 Haley Lecture for Art and Archaeology at Princeton University in March next year 🙏 watch this space for more details, and potentially some other US talks >> www.danhicks.uk/talks
Princeton Art and Archaeology departmental logo
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
I was lucky to attend the launch event for this special issue of CAJ earlier today. It will be an unmissable piece of scholarship for those of us working on relatedness. And it's open access!
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
I miraculously remembered my log in details for this app. Hello, friends, it's been a while! What did I miss?
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 30/12/2025
Oooops, I did it again!
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 21/12/2025
Back on this app while waiting for a delayed flight at the airport. It's the most wonderful time of the year, isn't it?
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 05/07/2025
I was gutted when we missed out on tickets, but live streaming is the next best thing! Anybody else watching? #BlackSabbath #BackToTheBeginning
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Leire Olabarria @leireolabarria.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
My students have done it again! Egyptology papers, camaraderie and plenty of doughnuts. What's not to like!?
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