“Man Fears Time, Time Fears The Pyramids”

Prof TREVOR BRYCE

Emeritus Professor Trevor Bryce (born 1940) is a Classicist and and Near Eastern historian. He has published extensively on the Classical and Near Eastern civilizations: his most recent publications are The Kingdom of the Hittites (new edition), The Trojans and their Neighbours, which includes a discussion on the Minoan and Mycenaean civilisations, and The Routledge Handbook of the Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia.

He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and has held visiting Fellowships at Princeton, Oxford and Canberra. His university career has included appointments as Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of New England, Australia and Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Lincoln University, New Zealand.

CHRIS NAUNTON

Chris Naunton is Deputy Director of the Egypt Exploration Society. He studied Egyptology at the universities of Birmingham and Swansea. Among his responsibilities at the EES he is in charge of the extensive archives which provide a rich source of information for his research on the history and development of Egyptology and archaeology in Egypt.

Chris is also director of the EES Oral History Project and has worked in the field at Abydos and in El Asasif, Western Thebes.

Prof CAROL SIMON

Professor Carol Simon, American Museum of Natural History herpetologist and animal behaviourist, is broadly trained in ecology, behaviour and evolution. Her research on the social behaviour of reptiles, particularly lizards, has taken her to many areas of North and Central America, with a strong focus on fieldwork at the Museum’s Southwestern Research Station in Arizona. Dr Simon is Professor Emerita of Biology at the City College of the City University of New York, and was a member of the AMNH research staff for over 30 years.

She has lectured on more than 50 tours in many parts of the world. Her lectures on the Cairo to Amman program focus on the natural history of the region.

Prof HOWARD TOPOFF

Professor Howard Topoff, American Museum of Natural History study leader, has spent 40 years researching the social behaviour, interrelationships, and community structure of animals. His field research has been conducted in Central and South America, Africa, and in desert habitats at the Museum’s Southwestern Research Station in Arizona. Dr Topoff is Professor Emeritus of Biopsychology at Hunter College, City University of New York.

His lecture topics on the Cairo to Amman programme include the unique geological features of the region and desert ecology.

Prof KATE WILSON

Kate Wilson was educated at Oxford where she read English, and in Italy. The author of twelve books on a wide variety of topics from Marriage to Adoption and foster care, Kate is now Emeritus Professor in Social Work at the University of Nottingham, having previously lectured at the universities of Hull and York. Before that she was a probation officer in London, and a sales assistant at John Lewis, an experience about which she has good stories to tell.

As well as lecturing in many parts of the world on her own professional subjects, Kate frequently presents and discusses the work of her mother, the poet Anne Ridler, who worked and shared friendships with such notable writers as TS Eliot, Lawrence Durrell and WH Auden, whom Kate also met. Widely travelled, especially in Italy, Kate has now returned with her husband Richard to the family house in Oxford where she grew up.

Kate has served as a member of the Arts Council, has been a non-executive director of a hospital trust, and continues as external examiner at two British universities and to chair a number of social work study groups and committees. Already a keen tennis player, she hopes to learn more about playing bridge on board ship. Kate and Richard have three sons.

Prof RICHARD WILSON

Richard Wilson was educated at Cambridge, Oxford and in France. His recent academic appointments were as international visiting professor at Portland State University and as visiting professor at Northwestern University. After an early career as a British Council lecturer in Africa and the Middle East he was awarded the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in the United States where he worked for and lectured at a number of leading North American organisations and universities, including the Council for Foreign Relations, the Humanities Institute, and Columbia and Northwestern universities.

In the UK he has lectured and been visiting fellow at the universities of Hull, York and Aberdeen. As Staff tutor in Arts, and chair, Literature in the Modern World, at the Open University and director of the Open Universities Drama summer schools, he worked with John Gielgud, Ben Kingsley, Patrick Stewart, Janet Suzman, and other prominent actors and directors.

A fiction prize-winner and BBC-trained presenter, Richard wrote and presented the BBC series Writers and Places, a theme he returns to in his talks on the ship. He and his wife Kate Wilson gave a keynote presentation at the annual general meeting of the USA Humanities Institute in Chicago, and Kate will join him from time to time in his presentations during the voyage. Richard is a former barge-hand, farm labourer, dishwasher at London restaurants, and Lyke Wake walker.