The foundation’s leadership combines decades of experience in archaeology, philology, finance, and law, ensuring a broad and well-founded research perspective.
Full Professor of Linguistics (since 2001) and former Chairman of the Senate (2005-2019) at the University of Innsbruck; Mycenologist and Historical Linguist. Habilitation with a thesis on vocalism in Lycian (1995).
Affiliated Researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Near Eastern Studies, Leiden, and at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, Hamburg. Member of the Common Room at Wolfson College, Oxford, and of the British School at Athens. Member of the Governing Board of the Teylers Museum in Haarlem (the Netherlands). PhD in Mediterranean Archaeology (2009).
PhD in Economics with 30 years experience in the automotive industry (16 years in Asia and 5 years in the UK). Author of multidisciplinary non-fiction books on Late Bronze Age trade networks in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Partner and Managing Partner (2001–2010) of Lenz & Staehelin, Switzerland’s largest law firm. Head of the Employment and Pensions practice group, expert in corporate law and corporate finance and private client advisor.
Formerly Senior Curator in the Department of Antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, USA (until 2024). Bachelor’s degree in classical archaeology from Harvard University. Doctorate from the University of Oxford (1988) with a dissertation on minor arts and regional styles in western Anatolia.
Master’s degree in Archaeology and Cultural Anthropology from Harvard University; PhD in Geology from Stanford University with a dissertation on the landscape evolution around Mycenae and Tiryns. Former Senior Research Associate at the University of Cambridge, UK.