Sarah Yeomans

Biography

Dr. Sarah Yeomans is an art historian and archaeologist specializing in the material and visual culture of the Graeco-Roman world, with a particular emphasis on ancient medicine, astronomy and religion. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Southern California and two Masters degrees: an M.A. in Archaeology from the University of Sheffield (U.K.) and a second M.A. in Art History from the University of Southern California. Her breadth of academic training and teaching experience ranges from the visual and material cultures of pre-historic societies up to our present time. She has a particular interest in semiotics, as well as the ways in which various artistic media have been deployed in the service of ideological propaganda.

At present, Dr. Yeomans is actively investigating two key areas of research. The first focuses on the interplay between visual culture, environmental and climatic change, and population-impacting pandemics in Europe from the Roman Imperial period to the early 20th century. The second involves an analysis of the vital role that Graeco-Roman libraries played in the transmission of scientific knowledge and their subsequent influence on the evolution of library collections and scientific practices in Early Modern Europe.

Dr. Yeomans was a Fulbright Fellow in 2021-2022 and a National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) fellow in 2022-2023, during which she conducted research on archaeological sites related to Graeco-Roman medical practices and technology in Turkey, Italy and Bulgaria. She has also been awarded several research grants and fellowships from various other institutions, including a research fellowship from the American Research Institute of Turkey (ARIT), a Mayers Fellowship for the History of Medicine at the Huntington Library and Art Museum and a Provost Fellowship from the University of Southern California.

For ten years, she served as the Director of Educational Programs at a Washington D.C.-based educational organization dedicated to the dissemination of information about scientific, archaeological investigations of biblical sites in Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Cyprus and southern Europe. Prior to joining St. Mary’s College of Maryland, she taught for the University of Southern California, West Virginia University and Duquesne University’s Rome program.

A native of Southern California, Dr. Yeomans has lived in England, France, Italy and Turkey at various points in her career, and has conducted archaeological fieldwork in Israel, Italy, Turkey, France and England. She appears in several television and film productions, including “The Story of God with Morgan Freeman” and “Ancient Unexplained Files.” Dr. Yeomans and her research have also featured in articles by numerous media outlets, such as the BBC, Live Science and the Huffington Post.

Her favorite part of working in academia? Her students! When she’s not teaching, she is generally happiest when roaming archaeological sites somewhere in the Mediterranean region or haunting the reading rooms of research libraries.