Gideon Shelach-Lavi is the Louis Freiberg Professor of East Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In recent years he has held various positions at the Hebrew University, including the Chair of the Asian Studies Department, the Chair of the Institute of African and Asian Studies, and Vice Dean of the Faculty of Humanities. Prof. Shelach-Lavi received a Ph.D. in archaeology from the University of Pittsburgh (1996) and since 1995 he has conducted archaeological fieldwork in North China and in Mongolia. In addition of being the PI of The Wall project, he recently completed the Fuxin Regional Archaeological Project in Liaoning province, China and has started a new regional project in Shandong province. Prof. Shelach-Lavi has published 9 books and more than 70 papers in leading academic journals (among them Science, Antiquity, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Journal of Archaeological Science, Current Anthropology and more, including academic journals in China). Among his recent books are: The Archaeology of China: From Prehistory to the Han Dynasty (Cambridge University Press, 2015); Prehistoric Societies on the Northern Frontiers of China: Archaeological Perspectives on Identity Formation and Economic Change during the First Millennium BCE (Equinox, 2009); Chifeng International Collaborative Archaeological Project (co-author, Pittsburgh 2011), Animals and Human Society in Asia: Historical, Cultural and Ethical Perspectives (co-editor, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), The Birth of Empire: The State of Qin Revisited (co-editor, University of California Press 2013).

Personal Website: https://gideonshelachlavi.huji.ac.il/