Micaeala Sinibaldi, 2013–2014 Fellow Profile
Micaela Sinibaldi has been a friend of ACOR since 1994. That was when she first came to Jordan with the University of Florence (Italy) to work in archaeology in Petra. Years later, while conducting excavations in Petra, her colleagues advised her to apply for an ACOR fellowship. She was awarded a Bikai Fellowship in 2006, and then began using the ACOR facilities to conduct research for her studies on 12th Century settlements of Crusader Transjordan as well as settlement in Petra during the Islamic periods.
Micaela has been awarded five ACOR named fellowships over the course of her graduate studies between 2006 and 2014. In 2014 she was awarded her doctoral degree in archaeology from Cardiff University. Micaela calls herself a “huge fan” of ACOR, where she will tell you that she loves the facility for its research space and its great library. ACOR gave her a professional environment, an opportunity to meet like-minded colleagues, friends, and a home for her last few years in Jordan, while she continued to research in pursuit of her doctoral degree. In fact, she says that working and researching at ACOR has been one of the most important steps in her career, particularly because of the connections she made while at ACOR. She has had the opportunity to work with international teams on more than ten different projects in Petra.
Micaela currently directs excavations at the site of Islamic Bayda in Petra. She is a Post-Doctoral fellow at Humboldt-Universität and Freie Universität, Berlin, and she is co-editing a volume on the archaeology and history of the Crusader period in the Middle East.