Jodi Magness holds a senior endowed chair in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism. From 1992-2002, she was Associate/ Assistant Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology in the Departments of Classics and Art History at Tufts University, Medford, MA. She received her B.A. in Archaeology and History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1977), and her Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania (1989). From 1990-92, Professor Magness was Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in Syro-Palestinian Archaeology at the Center for Old World Archaeology and Art at Brown University.

Professor Magness’ book on The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002) won the 2003 Biblical Archaeology Society’s Award for Best Popular Book in Archaeology in 2001-2002 and was selected as an “Outstanding Academic Book for 2003” by Choice Magazine. Professor Magness’ book The Archaeology of the Early Islamic Settlement in Palestine (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003) was awarded the 2006 Irene Levi-Sala Book Prize in the category of non-fiction on the archaeology of Israel.

Professor Magness’ other books are Debating Qumran: Collected Essays on Its Archaeology (Leuven: Peeters, 2004); Hesed ve-Emet, Studies in Honor of Ernest S. Frerichs (co-edited with S. Gitin; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998); and Jerusalem Ceramic Chronology circa 200-800 C.E. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1993). In addition, she has published numerous articles in journals and edited volumes. Her research interests, which focus on Palestine in the Roman, Byzantine, and early Islamic periods, include ancient pottery, ancient synagogues, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Roman army in the East. Professor Magness has participated on 20 different excavations in Israel and Greece, including co-directing the 1995 excavations in the Roman siege works at Masada. From 1997-99 she co-directed excavations at Khirbet Yattir in Israel. Professor Magness now co-directs excavations in the late Roman fort at Yotvata, Israel (since 2003).

In 1997-98 Professor Magness was awarded a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, and a fellowship in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., for a research project on The Archaeology of the Early Islamic Settlement in Palestine. In 2000-2001, Professor Magness was awarded the following fellowships for her book on The Archaeology of Qumran: a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowship for College Teachers; the Annual Professorship at the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem (declined); and a Skirball Visiting Fellowship at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. In spring 2005 Professor Magness received a Fulbright Lecturing Award through the United States-Israel Educational Foundation, to teach two courses at the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. For 2007-08, Professor Magness was awarded a fellowship at the School for Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, for work on a book provisionally titled Archaeological Expressions of Jewish Ritual Purity.

Professor Magness is a member (and past Vice-President) of the Board of Trustees of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem and is a member of the Managing Committee of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. She has also been a member of the Governing Board of the Archaeological Institute of America and of the Board of Trustees of the American Schools of Oriental Research. She served as President of the North Carolina Society of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) and was President of the Boston Society of the AIA.