Nisha Kumar is currently a PhD student at Harvard University. As a native New Yorker, she has been able to stay clear of the Yankees-Red sox rivalry as a Mets fan. Before joining Harvard, she completed a BA in Classical Archaeology from Hunter College and an MA in Egyptology from the University of Chicago. Her main research interests are in settlement archaeology, urbanism, and the material culture of ancient Egypt.

She has participated in several archaeological projects including the Iklaina Archaeological Project (Pylos, Greece), the Tausret Temple Project (Luxor, Egypt), and The Chicago-Tübingen Expedition to Zincirli (Gaziantep, Turkey). Outside of the field, she also has worked as a research assistant at the Oriental Institute and Brooklyn Museum.

In addition to these experiences, she is a firm believer that studying Arabic is becoming ever more important given the dynamics of the field and the relationship that Egyptology has with modern cultures and history. As part of the Giza Project’s Arabic Diaries project, she hopes to help illuminate the often-dismissed voices of the workmen who were intimately involved with the early excavations on the Giza plateau by compiling their hand-written materials into historiographical accounts.