Prof. Graham Philip is an archaeologist who specialises in the later prehistory and Bronze Age of the Levant and has undertaken fieldwork across the Middle East. He currently co-directs excavations at Tell Koubba in Northern Lebanon, in collaboration with colleagues at the American University of Beirut, having previously directed excavations at Tell esh-Shuna in Jordan (1991-94), and a joint Syrian-British regional survey in the Homs region of Syria (1999-2010), a project that pioneered the systematic combination of remote sensing with fieldwork, to enhance archaeological survey work.
After completing his doctorate in at Edinburgh University in 1988, Prof. Philip worked initially at the British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq in Baghdad and was then Assistant Director of the British Institute at Amman for Archaeology and History (1989-1992), now the CBRL Amman Institute). He briefly held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at University College London, before moving to Durham University in 1994, where is currently a professor of Archaeology.
His current research interests lie in three main areas: landscape archaeology, artefact studies, and efforts to understand the nature of early complex societies. In recent years his work on remote sensing techniques has extended to embrace heritage protection. Since 2016 Prof. Philip has been a Co-Investigator on the multi-institutional project Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA), which seeks to document heritage sites across a wide swathe of the MENA region, and which, with support from the Cultural Protection Fund of the British Council has delivered training to local heritage organisations across the region, with a particular focus on Lebanon, Syria and Iraq in the case of the Durham component of the project.
Prof. Philip served as Editor-in-Chief of Levant from 2008-2020 and from December 2023 has returned to the CBRL to serve on the journal’s Editorial Board and as Chair of the Publications sub-committee in 2024. He is Chair of the HR sub-committee.