Willeke Wendrich (PhD Leiden University 1999) is a professor of archaeology and digital humanities at the Politecnico di Torino, Italy, since 2023, after working for 23 years as a professor of Egyptian archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She was the director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and the Center for Digital Humanities at UCLA. She is a board member of the Institute for Field Research, Editor-in-chief of the online UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology and co-editor with Hans Barnard of the Cambridge Elements: Current Archaeological Tools and Techniques.
Willeke has directed or participated in archaeological projects in Egypt, Ethiopia, Yemen, Sudan, Turkey and Italy. Throughout her career she has advocated for the involvement of local communities in cultural heritage research and preservation.
As advisor to Sonali Gupta for her PhD research at UCLA, she has been closely interested and involved in Sonali’s subsequent activities and enthusiastically supports the activities of HCPS. She visited the Himalaya’s in the summer of 2022 and sees many parallels with her work in Europe and Africa.
Modern dance, moving with sound of nature or musical instruments, is Willeke’s other passion. She also enjoys the close interaction with horses in dressage, which is like ballet for horse and rider, as long as the horse enjoys it too.