Karin Sowada

Karin Sowada is a specialist in the archaeology of Egypt and the Middle East, with a focus on foreign engagement, trade and societal change in the Bronze Age. She is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow leading the four-year Project ‘Pyramids, Power and the Dynamics of States in Crisis’.

The Project aims to transform existing narratives on the impact of Egypt in the eastern Mediterranean during the Pyramid Age (c. 2660-2200 BC), by demonstrating the influence of large state entities as drivers of societal change in the ancient world. Using archaeological, historical and new scientific data, the research program focuses on the role of economic interests, statecraft and leadership in the face of climate change and the movement of people. The Project includes fieldwork, and scientific collaborations on four continents.

Born and raised in Sydney, Karin graduated in archaeology from the University of Sydney in 1989, and obtained a doctorate in Egyptian archaeology from the University in 2002. In a career spanning three decades, she has worked with expeditions in Egypt (Memphis, Saqqara, Denderah, Abydos, Theban Tombs 148, 233, 147, 149), Australia, Israel (Tel Yarmuth, Megiddo), and Jordan (Pella, Khirbet Iskandar). Karin has enjoyed a long association with Macquarie University, first participating in its excavations in Egypt at Saqqara in 1995.

She is one of few archaeologists with a ‘pan-Mediterranean’ perspective of foreign relations in the Early Bronze Age. As a result, in 2007 she was invited to join the Associated Regional Chronologies of the Ancient Near East Project (ARCANE), funded by the European Science Foundation, the only Egyptian specialist in a team of over 120 international scholars. Her highly-cited work Egypt in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Old Kingdom: An Archaeological Perspective (Fribourg/Göttingen, 2009) is a seminal text in the study of international engagement in the third millennium BC.

In 1996 Karin was appointed Assistant Curator of Sydney University's Nicholson Museum, Australia’s largest collection of antiquities from Western Asia. She oversaw a major capital works expansion, curated exhibitions, and conducted extensive research, publication and public engagement with a global reach. 

In other roles, Karin has had an extensive career in community service, politics, public policy and business. She has worked with a variety of non-for-profit and church organisations, including over six years as Chief Executive Officer of Anglican Deaconess Ministries Ltd (2008-2015) and non-executive Director of national charity Mission Australia (2008-2017). In the early 1990s, Karin served as an Australian Democrats Senator for NSW in the Parliament of Australia, then the youngest woman to do so. During that time she was party spokesperson for Education and Youth, including the higher education sector.