Peter Der Manuelian is the Barbara Bell Professor of Egyptology and holds a joint appointment in the Anthropology Department and the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. He is also director of the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East (HMANE). He came to Harvard in 2010, after serving on the curatorial staff of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), since 1987, and teaching for a decade at Tufts University. At the MFA he was Giza Archives Project Director from 2000 to 2011, and now directs the Giza Project at Harvard. In addition to Giza, his Egyptian archaeological and epigraphic site work includes New Kingdom temples at Luxor (Epigraphic Survey, University of Chicago), and the Predynastic site of Naqada.
His primary research interests include ancient Egyptian history and historiography, archaeology, epigraphy, the development of mortuary architecture, and the (icono)graphic nature of Egyptian language and culture. He has published on diverse topics and periods in Egyptian history, but currently focuses on the third millennium BCE, and specifically on the famous Giza Necropolis, just west of modern Cairo.
Interested in both ancient and modern graphic design—publishing in the broadest sense of the word—he believes in bringing new technologies into his research and into the classroom. Recent efforts have focused on photogrammetry, AR and VR visualizations, and other immersive technologies as an aid to archaeological research. He has recently published a biography of Harvard archaeologist George A. Reisner (1867–1942), and is directing the Arabic Diaries Project, focusing on 73 Arabic Expedition diary books from the Harvard University–Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition (1905–1947) that give voice to the historically voiceless Egyptians working on the dig.