Professional Summary
Jacob Engstrom is a PhD candidate specializing in Aegean Prehistory. For the 2025-26 academic year he is the Edward Capps Advanced Fellow at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and the Richard Seager Fellow at the Institute for Aegean Prehistory Study Center for East Crete. In 2024-25 he was the Heinrich Schliemann Fellow at the American School. Jacob's research focuses on transcultural interactions and cultural entanglements, stylistic change and adoption, regional variation, and relative chronologies in the Middle and Late Bronze Age Aegean. His dissertation project, "Marine Style: Relational and Contextual Approaches to Pottery Production, Stylistic Change, and Consumption in the Late Bronze Age Aegean" takes a cross-media approach to Marine Style pottery as an interregional case study in the dynamics of development, adoption, and change in pottery styles and ceramic production, distribution, and consumption practices. He holds further research interests in the intellectual and political history of archaeology in the Aegean; archives; ideologies of Hellenism and Philhellenism; and archaeological theory.
Jacob has worked as an excavation supervisor with UC's Palace of Nestor Excavations at Pylos, the Eastern Boeotia Archaeological Project at Ancient Eleon, and the Olynthos Project. He has also assisted with pottery study and cataloguing at Ayia Irini on Kea and Poros-Heraklion and Galatas on Crete.
Before coming to Cincinnati, Jacob earned a BA Honours with Distinction from the University of Victoria. He defended his MA thesis at UC in 2022, offering a critical and integrative historiographical analysis of Carl Blegen's excavations at Troy (1932-38) based on research in the Department's archives.
Publications
Articles and Book Chapters
Engstrom, J. M. (forthcoming, 2026) "A Marble Engraving of a 'Mycenaean' Warrior from Ayia Irini, Kea: Island Iconography and Social Context," Hesperia.
Engstrom, J. M. 2024. "Archive Archaeology and Critical Disciplinary Histories: A Case Study on the Origins of the University of Cincinnati Expedition to the Troad (1932-1938)," in Trends in Archive Archaeology: Current Research on Archival Material from Fieldwork and Its Implications for Archaeological Practice (Archive Archaeology 5), ed. J. M. Frey and R. Raja, Turnhout, pp. 91-114.
Braun, G. C., and J. M. Engstrom. 2022. "Lead Figurines from the Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta in the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (Canada): Problems of Typology and Collections History," Annual of the British School at Athens 117, pp. 195-228. (co-authored)
Works in Progress
"...Still believe in Helen': An Archival History of the University of Cincinnati Expedition to the Troad and Institutional Politics" (for submission to Hesperia)
Other Publications
Stewart, S. M., ed. 2024. Centuries of Classics in Cincinnati, Cincinnati.
- A history of Classics and archaeology at the University of Cincinnati; contributed entries on Carl W. Blegen, Cedric G. Boulter, and John L. Caskey
Education
B.A. Honours: University of Victoria 2020 (Greek and Roman Studies)
M.A.: University of Cincinnati 2023 (Classics)
Research Support
2024 -2025 American School of Classical Studies at Athens Heinrich Schliemann Fellowship
2022 University of Cincinnati Marion and Dorothy Rawson Fellowship
2022 University of Cincinnati Cedric G. Boulter Fellowship
2025 Institute for Aegean Prehistory Study Center for East Crete Richard Seager Fellowship
2025 -2026 American School of Classical Studies at Athens Edward Capps Fellowship