The American School of Classical Studies at Athens is pleased to welcome Brendan Burke as he begins a three-year appointment as the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Classical Studies. Burke will lead the School's Academic Program, which offers graduate students an unparalleled immersion into the sites and monuments of Greek civilization. As Mellon Professor, Burke will organize and lead multiple field trips for the students throughout Greece in the fall as well as an intensive study of the sites and museums of Athens and Attica in the spring. In addition, he will help coordinate the other components of the Academic Program, including seminars from visiting scholars, workshops and lectures (in-person and online), and assist in advising graduate students performing research at the School.

Brendan Burke

Brendan Burke at ancient Eleon

Burke said, "This is a great opportunity, and I am grateful to the School for entrusting me with the Mellon Professor position. I very much look forward to working with many of the brightest students and scholars in North America. The School's academic program is truly unique among the foreign schools in Athens, and I hope to continue many of our great traditions while also incorporating new approaches to the study of the Greek world."

Brendan Burke is Professor of Greek and Roman Studies at the University of Victoria. Since 2007, he has co-directed the Eastern Boeotia Archaeological Project, excavating at the ancient Eleon site with Bryan Burns of Wellesley College. This project is a synergasia of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Boeotia, directed by Alexandra Harami and the Canadian Institute in Greece. Burke holds degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles (M.A. and Ph.D.) and the University of Florida (B.A.). His areas of specialization are the Aegean Bronze Age, the archaeology and economy of cloth production, and Anatolian archaeology. He is the author of From Minos to Midas: Ancient Cloth Production in the Aegean and in Anatolia (Ancient Textiles Series Volume 7, Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2010). Other publications include "Fieldwork at Ancient Eleon in Boeotia, 2011–2018" (with B. Burns, A. Charami, T. Van Damme, N. Herrmann, and B. Lis; American Journal of Archaeology, 2020) and "Materialization of Mycenaean Ideology and the Ayia Triada Sarcophagus" (American Journal of Archaeology, 2005). In addition to working in Greece, he worked for many years at the site of Gordion and published "The Rebuilt Citadel at Gordion: Building A and the Mosaic Building Complex" (The Archaeology of Phrygian Gordion, edited by B. Rose, Philadelphia, 2012).

Burke brings unique insights to the Mellon Professorship due to his long association with the School. He was a Regular Member (1994–1995), Doreen Canaday Spitzer Fellow (1996–1997), and Assistant Professor of Classical Studies (2000–2002). As a member of the School's Managing Committee since 2003, he has been elected to the Committee on Committees (the committee overseeing nominations and elections), the Publications Committee, and the Executive Committee. In addition to his commitment to the School, he has a long involvement with the Canadian Institute in Greece, where he served as its Interim Academic Director. He recently completed five years as head of the Department of Greek and Roman Studies at the University of Victoria and has often led semester-long travel-study courses in Greece for the department.

Look for a Q&A with Brendan Burke in the American School Newsletter coming out later this fall! Please watch the following short film to learn more about the American School's renowned Academic Program and distinguished Mellon Professors.