Dr Peter Magee is the Director of the in-construction Zayed National Museum in Abu Dhabi. He also serves as Chair of the International Association for the Study of Arabia. He has over 25 years of experience in researching and promoting the cultural heritage of the United Arab Emirates and Arab world. He is the recipient of numerous awards for research and scholarship from universities and funding bodies in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. In 2018 he was awarded the Sheikh Mubarak bin Mohammed Prize for Services to UAE Archaeology.

He has directed archaeological field projects throughout the region, beginning with excavations in the UAE in 1992. His work was initially located in the academic sphere, serving for 20 years as a Professor of Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia, USA and prior to that in Research Positions in Belgium and Australia. Since 2015, he has focussed his career on Museums, Heritage Site-Activation and Public Education. 

Dr Magee is the author of over 70 scientific publications including books by Harvard University Press and Cambridge University Press. His scientific papers have been published in the world's leading scientific journals including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America; The American Journal of Archaeology; Antiquity, Archiv für Orient-forschung; South Asian Studies; Current Anthropology, Paléorient: Revue pluridisciplinaire de prehistoire; and Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy.

He is passionately committed to the exploration of history and archaeology from a community engagement perspective. He currently serves on the editorial boards of scientific journals. In 2015 he was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Professor and Historian at Zayed University

Professor, Archaeologist, and Historian at the Zayed University

Archaeologist
Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi