Carol Palmer is director of the British Institute in Amman, the Council for British Research in the Levant’s research base in Jordan. HRH Prince Hassan bin Talal is the institute’s patron and, since 2009, it has held formal ties with the Royal Scientific Society.

Carol is an anthropologist, environmental archaeologist and botanist. Her research interests lie in Middle Eastern rural societies past and present; relationships between settled agriculturalists and mobile nomadic pastoralists; anthropology of food production and consumption; ethnobotany; and rural transformation in response to social, developmental and political upheavals of the recent period. Her PhD focussed on traditional agriculture in northern Jordan, with subsequent studies on rural areas of the south, most recently in the Tafila governorate as part of a project identifying construction techniques and activity areas in traditional houses, and which follows on from a similar project on Bedouin tents. She is a member of the research collective Thimar which works to share information and analysis and to open policy debate on the interconnections between agriculture, environment and labour. 

Carol is the organiser of the special session on ‘Science and Archaeology’ that brings together some of the UK’s top archaeological scientists to present papers how human beings have responded to perennial challenges, including food and climate change, and what insights archaeology can offer future debates and solutions.