Robert E. Murowchick

Dr. Robert Murowchick’s principal research interests include the development of early metallurgy in China and Southeast Asia, archaeological remote sensing (particularly the use of aerial and satellite imagery), and the relationship among politics, nationalism, and archaeological research. Since 1991, Dr. Murowchick has served as co-investigator and then as co-principal investigator of the Sino-US collaborative archaeological field program Investigations into Early Shang Civilization, with the Institute of Archaeology (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing). This ongoing project is tracing the origins of the Shang civilization through an interdisciplinary program of geological testing and landscape reconstruction, geophysical remote sensing, and archaeological excavation focused on the region of Shangqiu County in eastern Henan Province, China.

Dr. Murowchick is director of the International Center for East Asian Archaeology & Cultural History (ICEAACH) at Boston University, where he also serves as research associate professor of archaeology and anthropology. He is one of the founding editors of the Journal of East Asian Archaeology (JEAA), which is edited at BU and published by Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden. He is also an associate in East Asian archaeology at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

Dr. Murowchick serves as an academic trustee of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), and is active in Asia-related public outreach activities with museums and K-12 teachers. Dr. Murowchick served as associate director of Harvard’s Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning from 1990 to 1992, and then concurrently as associate director of the John King Fairbank Center for East Asian Research and of Harvard’s Title VI National Resource Center for East Asian Studies from 1992 to 1996.