Academic career
While completing her doctoral studies,Bestock served for one semester as Adjunct Professor,Egyptian Archaeology at Hunter College,City University of New York. [3] She then became a Research Associate for the Lila Acheson Wallace Egyptian art collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art for one year. [3]
In July 2008,Bestock returned to her undergraduate alma mater,Brown University,as Assistant Professor of Archaeology and the Ancient World and Egyptology and Ancient Western Asia (later renamed Egyptology and Assyriology) in July 2008. [3] She was appointed to the position of Vartan Gregorian Assistant Professor of Archaeology and the Ancient World &Egyptology and Assyriology in 2013,until she was granted tenure and the title of Associate Professor of Archaeology and the Ancient World &Egyptology and Assyriology in 2016. [3] Brown University's Corporation voted to award her a named chair position at its May 2025 meetings,when her title became Joukowsky Family Associate Professor of Archaeology and the Ancient World and Egyptology and Assyriology. [1]
Archaeological research
Bestock is the co-director,with Christian Knoblauch (Swansea University),of the Uronarti Regional Archaeology Project (URAP),an excavation at Uronarti,Sudan. [7] [8] [9] Beginning in 2012,the project is excavating and anyalyzing a 12th Dynasty fortress and surrounding buildings on the island of Uronarti,in Lower Nubia—updating and expanding on archaeological research undertaken in the 1920s and 1930s. [7]
She is also co-director of Kiosk Archaeological Recording Platform, [10] [11] a system of recording archaeological data that was developed at Brown University and has been used by multiple Brown and non-Brown field projects,including sites in Italy,Peru,Egypt,Cyprus,and Providence,RI,and Wellesely,MA,in the United States.
In 2025,New York University's Institute of Fine Arts appointed Bestock the Executive Director of the University's Excavations at Abydos,in Egypt.
