Research Team

Stefania Mainieri

Principal Investigator

Stefania completed her PhD research at the Università “L’Orientale” di Napoli (UniOr) on the Egyptian Collection of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (MANN). She was also one of the curators of the new permanent exhibition of the Egyptian Collection at the MANN, which opened in 2016.

Since 2014 she has been an external collaborator of the MANN, a curator of temporary and permanent exhibitions, expertise and cataloguer of Egyptian finds. Since 2015 she had been working alongside the chair of Egyptology at UniOr as Teaching Assistant (until 2021) and she is a member of the Italian-Egyptian Archaeological Expedition at Manqabad – Abba Nefer Monastery (Asyut-Egypt). Specialized in museography, Egyptian funerary archaeology, material culture and 3D modelling, since 2018 is part of the Vatican Coffin Project. She is presently a Researcher at the Museo Egizio di Torino and Visiting Associate Researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles for the Faces Revealed Project.

Christian Greco

Supervisor for the Beneficiary Institution (Museo Egizio, Torino)

Christian Greco is the Director of the Museo Egizio di Torino since 2014. He managed a refurbishment of the museum building and a renovation of its galleries, completed on March 31st 2015, whereby the Museo Egizio was transformed from an antiquities museum into an archaeological museum. Trained mainly in the Netherlands, he is an Egyptologist with vast experience working in museums. Christian Greco is also currently teaching courses in the material culture of ancient Egypt and museology at the Università di Torino and Pavia, the Scuola di Specializzazione in Beni Archeologici of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, the Scuola IUSS in Pavia. For several years, he was a member of the Epigraphic Survey of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago in Luxor and since 2011 he has been co-director of the Italian-Dutch archaeological mission at Saqqara. 

Kathlyn (Kara) Cooney

Supervisor for the Host Institution (NELC, UCLA)

Kara is Professor of Egyptian Art and Architecture and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures (NELC) at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Specializing in craft production, coffin studies, and economies in the ancient world, Cooney’s current research in coffin reuse, primarily focusing on the 19th and 21st Dynasties, is ongoing. Her research investigates the socioeconomic and political turmoil that have plagued the period, ultimately affecting funerary and burial practices in ancient Egypt. This project has taken her around the world over the span of five to six years to study and document nearly 300 coffins in collections, including those in Cairo, London, Paris, Berlin, and Vatican city, and the monograph Materiality of Death is in progress.

Corinna Rossi

Supervisor for the Secondment (DABC – PoliMi)

Corinna is Architect and Egyptologist, Associate Professor of Egyptology at Architecture, Built environment and Construction engineering (A.B.C.) Department, Politecnico di Milano, Italy and Principal Investigator in ERC project Life (https://www.life.polimi.it/)
Corinna graduated in Architecture at the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II and earned a PhD in Egyptology at Cambridge University under the supervision of Barry J. Kemp. She worked for many years on the relationship between architecture and mathematics in ancient Egypt, and developed a parallel interest in the antiquities of the Western Desert. In particular, she is interested in the large-scale strategy of occupation and exploitation of the area in the Roman period, with special attention to the mutual relationship and the desert tracks that linked the archaeological sites.

Alessandro Mandelli

Specialist Senior Technician for the Secondment (DABC – PoliMi)

Alessandro obtained a master’s degree with honours in Architecture in 2011 and a Ph.D in Geomatics in 2016 at Politecnico di Milano. In 2012 he joined the Architecture, Built environment and Construction engineering (A.B.C.) Department as Research Fellow.

He has held a piloting licence for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles since 2017. From 2019, Alessandro has a full-time position as Specialist Senior Technician in the ABCLab. Here he coordinates topographic, photogrammetric, laser-scanner, and UAV surveys and participates in different architectural and archaeological projects in Italy and abroad.