Irene Bald Romano, Ph.D.

Irene Bald Romano, Ph.D. is Professor of Art History in the School of Art, Professor of Anthropology in the School of Anthropology, Curator of Mediterranean Archaeology in the Arizona State Museum, and Affiliated Faculty in the Department of Religious Studies and Classics and in the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona. She teaches courses on plundered art, cultural heritage, museum studies, and ancient art and archaeology of the Mediterranean region, and is the co-director of the Graduate Certificate Program in Museum Studies.

Dr. Romano earned a Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania, and holds a B.A. from Manhattanville College. She has more than 30 years of experience as a museum professional, holding many positions, including as registrar, curator, researcher, consultant, and coordinator of the collections' division at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and as Deputy Director of the Arizona State Museum from 2012 to 2015. Dr. Romano came to the University of Arizona in 2012 from a position she held for six years as the Executive Director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

She is the author, co-author, or editor of eight books as well as numerous articles on ancient Mediterranean collections, Greek and Roman sculpture, pottery, terracotta figurines, Greek cult practice, and marble provenance studies. She has extensive archaeological field experience in Greece, Spain, Italy, and Turkey, and has worked with scholars from many countries on international research and museum projects.

Dr. Romano's recent research focuses on the fate of antiquities during the Nazi era (1933-1945). She is the editor and co-author of an online 2023 publication about the trade in, confiscation and restitution of Middle Eastern, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine objects during this period, a topic that had been little explored (https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/rihajournal/issue/view/5439). Her book on a marble portrait of Alexander the Great from ancient Nysa-Scythopolis (Beth Shean, Israel) was published by the American Philosophical Society in 2024 (https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/52023).