Keynote Speaker

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- John F. Healey (England)
Professor Emeritus of Semitic Studies at the University of Manchester, UK, and Fellow of the British Academy. His main publications are on Nabataean Aramaic and Syriac: The Nabataean Tomb Inscriptions of Mada'in Salih (1993), The Old Syriac Inscriptions of Edessa and Osrhoene [with Han Drijvers] (1999), The Religion of the Nabataeans: A Conspectus (2001), and Aramaic Inscriptions and Documents of the Roman Period (2009).
 
- David Graf (USA)
PhD Michigan, has been at the University of Miami since 1986. He is the author of Rome and Its Arabian Frontier from the Nabataeans to the Saracens (1997) and more than 130 scholarly articles, many on Nabataean culture. He is a specialist in Nabataean epigraphy and currently the director of the Hellenistic Petra Project.
 
- David Johnson (USA)
Is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Brigham Young University. He has excavated at Petra for 40 years, first with Dr. Phillip Hammond on the Temple of the Winged Lions and then directing his own excavations at Wadi Mataha since 1998. He has worked on archaeological expeditions in Egypt (Tell el Shukafiyya), Yemen (Marib), the Dhofar area of Oman (Khor Mughsayl) and on the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius in Italy (Pollena Tocchia). His major research interests are Nabataean trade, religion and burial practices.
 
- Solaiman Abd. Al-Theeb (Saudi Arabia)
Is a professor at King Saud University and a specialist in Aramaic and Nabataean inscriptions, he has published a lot of books and articles on the Nabataean language and inscriptions which were found in Saudi Arabia and the kingdom of Nabataea.

 

- Zeyad M. Al-Salameen (Jordan)
Is an Associate Professor of Nabataean archaeology and epigraphy and the Chairholder of the UNESCO Chair on Heritage and Sustainable Tourism at al-Hussein Bin Talal University. He got his PhD in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Manchester in 2004. His research interests include Nabataean archaeology and epigraphy and the history and civilization of Petra and its hinterland. He has published several books and numerous articles on topics pertaining to these fields.