Bethany Walker

Bethany Walker (PhD 1998, University of Toronto) is professor of Islamic Archaeology at the University of Bonn. Before moving to Germany, she taught Middle Eastern history for 14 years as a university professor in the United States. A historically trained archaeologist, Walker directs multiple archaeological projects in Israel and Jordan. Her research sits at the intersection of environmental history and peasant studies and explores such topics as state-peasant relations, land tenure and use, and landscape transformation. As a Visiting Fellow in Department III of the MPIWG, she is studying peasant practice and agrarian strategies in medieval Palestine as part of the Working Group “Agriculture and the Making of Sciences (1100–1700).”

Walker has published extensively on Mamluk history, medieval agrarian society, rural migration, and medieval Islamic ceramics. She serves on numerous editorial boards internationally, and is a long-time board member of the American Center of Research in Amman. She is currently working on the monograph Life on the Farm in Late Medieval Jerusalem: The Peasant Farmstead of Khirbet Beit Mazmil, Its Occupants and Their Industry over Five Centuries under contract with Equinox.