Meet the Expert | Miriam Müller
Dr. Miriam Müller is a university lecturer in Egyptology at Leiden University and has been the director of the Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO) since September 2024. She’s specialised in Egyptian household archaeology. LeidenGlobal spoke with her about her research and on her work and plans as the NINO director.
After finishing her master’s degree in Egyptology at Heidelberg University, she went to Vienna for her PhD, which focussed on the archaeological side of Egyptology. Afterwards, she held postdoc positions at various American universities, before coming to work at NINO and Leiden University seven years ago. She wrote her PhD on a neighbourhood in ancient Avaris, a cosmopolitan city in the Eastern Nile Delta. She researched how people lived on a daily basis and what their work and family life looked like, this research was published in 2023. As Egyptological research usually focused on the life of the pharaoh, pyramids and temples, her research on commoners in ancient Egypt was quite unique. She later also worked on research about household cults, private religion and ancestor veneration.
As NINO director, she represents the institute, collaborates and forges new ties with other institutes in the Netherlands and abroad. She also works together with various partners such as the National Museum of Antiquities (RMO) to communicate the institute’s research to a wider public, by organising events and lectures. What dr. Müller enjoys most about being the director of the NINO, is that the institute is not just focused on one discipline or region, but brings together many regional specialities. She enjoys bringing all these researchers together and facilitating new research. She wishes to be a mentor for researchers that are still in the early stages of their career, “I had very good mentors throughout my career, I want to be this person for others as well and bring out the best.”
One of the many things she would like to work on is a possible future NINO excavation. Being an archaeologist at heart, fieldwork is very important to her. “People do a lot of fieldwork, but for it to be successful, you need good support, NINO gives small grants for fieldwork but I want to expand that so it can really make a difference, and we’d hear a lot more about it in the future.”
In the future, she would personally be interested to do more research on what was happening in the borderlands of ancient Egypt, as this exchange is very interesting to her. It’s also a very contemporary topic, as we could learn from it for our society today. “In antiquity, societies had very similar questions of integration, keeping your own traditions and what to take from a new culture.”
On the 16th of March, Miriam Müller presents a program with lectures, as the final part of the Week of the Classics (Week van de Klassieken) at the National Museum of Antiquities.
Interview by LeidenGlobal Intern Eline Raukema
January 2025
Have a look at our other experts on the Expert page