MURAT AKAR
Murat Akar got his BA from Archaeology and History of Art Department of Bilkent University; MSc degree from Settlement Archaeology of Middle East Technical University and PhD degree in Near Eastern Archaeology from the University of Florence in Italy. Being a former research fellow at ANAMED and Archaeology and History of Art Department of Koç University, he has been teaching at Hatay Mustafa Kemal University, Department of Archaeology since 2016. He is the director of the Amuq Valley Regional Survey Project and the excavations at Tell Atchana, Alalakh. He is also a senior member of the rescue excavations at Toprakhisar Höyük run by Hatay Archaeological Museum.
His research areas include architecture, memory, and landscape studies, particularly for the 2nd Millennium BC Anatolia, the Near East, and the Levant. His current research addresses the role of climate in the longue durée for understanding the continuously shifting population dynamics and cross-cultural encounters in Eastern Mediterranean contexts as part of the recently accepted Tübitak 1001 project “Geological and Archaeological Traces of Climatic Changes in the Amuq Valley of Hatay during the Holocene”.
