Faculty research interests include Egyptian language, religion, warfare, and kingship; Mesopotamian literary and scholarly texts, history, divination, medicine, and science; the archaeology and languages of ancient Turkey; the relationship between text and archaeology; the study of calendars and chronology; and, the history of astronomy, astrology, and the related sciences in the ancient world. In addition, department faculty direct archaeological projects at the sites of Abydos in Egypt, Uronarti in the Sudan, and Labraunda in Turkey.

'E/A' has a thriving research culture which includes a weekly departmental seminar series, frequent guest lecturers, and regular long-term visitors who come to the department to work with our faculty and to use Brown’s library resources (in particular Brown’s excellent collection of Egyptology literature and the Pingree collection of books, microfilms, and photocopies of early scientific manuscripts).

Over the past few years the department has organized conferences on topics including new approaches to how the earliest stages of the Egyptian language are to be understood, the archaeologies of text, and the circulation of astronomical knowledge in the ancient world. The department also enjoys close links with other units at Brown including the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World and the Departments of Classics, History and Religious Studies.