Nora Shawki

Nora Shawki is a National Geographic Explorer and Egyptian archaeologist. She has been excavating ancient sites in the Nile Delta for seven years. She has served as a field archaeologist on foreign missions at sites including Tell Timai (Thmuis), Sa El Hagar (Sais), and Tell Mutubis in Egypt as well as Tombos and El Kurru in Northern Sudan. Nora is now directing her own excavation at satellite sites in the Delta. She received her undergraduate degree in archaeology at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, followed by her master’s in archaeology at England’s Durham University. Currently working on her Ph.D. in a joint program at Cairo University and Durham University, she studies settlement archaeology, a relatively new subfield that focuses on non-elite settlements and the daily lives of the communities that lived in them. Her research is focused on Late Period settlements, using material culture and religious ideologies to better understand the impact of royal policy on non-elite Egyptians. Nora is a 2015 National Geographic Young Explorer grantee and is part of the 2017 Young Explorer Leadership and Development Program.