Wendy Matthews

Associate Professor in Archaeology in the School of Archaeology Geography and Environmental Science (SAGES)

Wendy Matthews is an Associate Professor in Archaeology at the University of Reading. Her research focuses on early agricultural and urban transformations and built environments in SW Asia and past, present and future sustainability and climate and environment change. She has conducted fieldwork and interdisciplinary research in Türkiye, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Bahrain, and is a specialist in archaeological sediment analysis. She is Co-director of the Central Zagros Archaeological Project and excavations at the UNESCO World Heritage site Bestansur (Tentative List) in Iraq KRG, with Prof Roger Matthews, funded by ERC (MENTICA), AHRC, National Geographic, British Academy and NERC LSMSF. She has co-led community engagement in environmental and heritage protection in Iraq, including co-design of a new Prehistory Gallery in the Slemani Museum, which has sustainability themes at its heart. She was the University of Reading Academic Lead for the AHRC South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership and Chair of the British Association for Near Eastern Archaeology. She is the University of Reading Sustainability Champion for SAGES, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and Scientific Committee Member, International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East.

She has a PhD from the University of Cambridge on housing and the built environment in an early urban settlement in Mesopotamia, Iraq. Before joining the University of Reading, she was a Research Fellow at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge and Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology, University of California Berkeley.