Biography
Dr. Rand Abou Ackl is an archaeologist of the Middle East. He was a visiting postdoctoral fellow with Mellon Fellowship Program at Columbia Global Centers | Amman, where his research focused on the Last Judgment iconography in Syria and Lebanon; icons and frescoes dated to the medieval period, and Melkite school in the Ottoman period. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Rome “Sapienza” and a M.A. in Classical and Islamic archaeology from the University of Damascus. His doctoral research focused on the architecture of the Melkite icons in Syria from the middle of the seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century CE. Ackl has a certificate in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection from ARCA and completed coursework in Forensic Archaeology at IFA at the International University for Peace in Rome.
Among other projects, Ackl also recently co-taught a course at Off University with another Mellon Fellow – Mohamad Moustafa Alabsi – titled “Heritage, Politics, and Modern State in the Middle East” hosted by Ludwig-Maximilians Universtät München. He worked in the documentation of icons and relics at Santa Maria in Cosmiden Basilic in Rome, and haspublished a number of research papers in the field of iconography and post Byzantine in “Chronos”, URBS (VURBS) – Studi sulla romanità antica e tardoantica, and in “Les annales archéologiques arabes syriennes”.
Education
Ph.D. La Sapienza University, 2019
M.A. The Damascus University, 2011
B.A. The Damascus University, 2007