Linda Evans

Linda Evans is an Australian environmental historian and Egyptologist in the Department of Ancient History, Macquarie University, Sydney. She completed a BA (Hons) in Classical Studies and Psychology (1981) at the University of Adelaide before travelling to the United States to work in the field of animal behaviour in laboratories at Washington University in St Louis (1982-1986), Rockefeller University, New York (1987-1989), and the University of California, Davis (1989-1993). Upon returning to Australia, she completed both an MA (1998) and PhD (2007) in Egyptology at Macquarie University.

Dr Evans’ research draws on her background in both Biology and Classical Studies/Egyptology by exploring the relationship between humans and non-human animals in the ancient world as reflected in religious ideas, symbolism, and especially art. Her PhD thesis examined the representation of animal behaviour in ancient Egyptian tomb paintings at Giza and Saqqara. She was subsequently awarded a Macquarie University Research Fellowship (2008-2010), in which she investigated the ancient Egyptians’ relationship with invertebrates. This was followed by an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship (2011-2014), in which she focused on current scientific understanding of Egypt’s geography, climate, flora, and fauna during the pharaonic era, in order to evaluate the impact of the natural world on Egyptian cultural expression.

She has published extensively on ancient Egyptian environmental phenomena, and now sits on the Editorial Board for a new series, Ancient Environments, with Bloomsbury Books. In conjunction with colleagues at Macquarie University, she has been awarded two highly competitive, federally-funded grants to work at ancient cemetery sites in Egypt, Immortal Egypt: Cultural tradition and transition during the First Intermediate Period at Meir (2011-2014), and most recently, Measuring meaning in Egyptian art: A new approach to an intractable problem (2016-2018). The latter includes Dr Evans’ current research focus on the animals represented in tomb paintings at the site of Beni Hassan.

Dr Evans has worked as a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Ancient History since 2015. She has also acted as the Associate Director of the Macquarie University Ancient Cultures Research Centre and is currently the Director of the Master of Research programme in the Faculty of Arts.