PRESIDENT-ELECT JANE DEROSE EVANS’S VISION STATEMENT
Jane DeRose Evans was elected as ASOR’s next President by the Board of Trustees during the Annual Meeting in November 2024. Jane will serve as the President-elect during 2025 as current President Sharon Herbert finishes her term. Below is her vision statement for ASOR:
ASOR is in a very healthy place overall – we have an active annual meeting where important information is shared and discussed; we produce excellent publications; we provide support for fieldwork of different kinds; and we have strong support in terms of development from a host of members. Because of ASOR’s health and size, we have been able to shift out of crisis mode and into long-range planning mode. I suggest that this long-term planning would include broadening ASOR’s audience for its programs, publications, and outreach. This includes scholars of ancient history, archaeology, Biblical studies, cultural heritage, digital humanities, and philology, as well as serious laypersons who are interested in these same topics. We can ensure the long-term viability of ASOR by bringing younger members into positions of responsibility, making sure that they have a voice in the future of ASOR, and that we readily acknowledge their contributions of time, thought, and work to the organization. We do not need to, nor should we, replicate other learned societies, but we need to provide programming and member opportunities to learn about and work in regions or areas of specialty that are specific and of interest to the membership.
ASOR is pleased to announce Regan Baker as ASOR’s new Membership Coordinator! Regan Baker graduated from The George Washington University with a Bachelor’s of Art in Archaeology in May 2023. In February, 
Moni Islam joined ASOR on April 29 as the new Office Coordinator. He has a Master’s of Arts in Archaeology from Durham University in the United Kingdom, as well as a Bachelor’s of Arts in Anthropology and Global Affairs from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. He has been familiar with ASOR for many years, including having won a 2021 ASOR Summer Stipend Award to work remotely on the Jezreel Expedition Publication Project where he helped organize the project’s open database, conduct research on a Palestinian village, and compile relevant photos and resources.
We are all sensing people, and the basic physical structure of our sensing organs has not changed for many thousands of years. But how did ancient humans perceive and experience sensory stimuli in their environment differently than we do today? Dr. Thomason sets out to explore this topic for the ancient Mesopotamians in particular. The history of the senses and explorations of sensory experiences in the ancient world have been increasingly the focus of scholarly research. Archaeologists, art historians and textual scholars have tried to recreate past sensory environments and experiences by using evidence from images, artifacts and ancient texts of all kinds.
In this lecture, Dr. Thomason, a specialist in ancient Mesopotamian material culture, explores how ancient Mesopotamian perceptions of sensory experiences can be compared to our own modern ones, by trying to understand the way that Mesopotamians sensed their environment and material culture and what perceptions they had of certain types of objects, such as metal bowls, wooden gates, and textiles.
