Joan Breton Connelly is a classical archaeologist who has excavated throughout Greece, Kuwait, and Cyprus where, since 1990, she has directed the NYU Yeronisos Island Expedition.  She majored in Classics at Princeton University and received her PhD in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College where she later served as Assistant Dean and as a member of the Board of Trustees.  She is an honorary citizen of Peyia Municipality, Cyprus.

Connelly was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship for her work in Greek art, myth, and religion.  She is the author of Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece, winner of the Archaeological Institute of America’s James R. Wiseman Book Award.  Her new book, The Parthenon Enigma, won the Phi Beta Kappa Society’s Ralph Waldo Emerson Award for 2015. Connelly has also been honored with the Archaeological Institute of America’s Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award and NYU's Lillian Vernon Chair for Teaching Excellence.

Prof. Connelly has held visiting fellowships at All Souls College, Magdalen College, New College, and Corpus Christi College at Oxford University, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.  From 2003 – 2011, she served on the Cultural Property Advisory Committee, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State.  Connelly currently serves on the boards of the Association of Members of the Institute for Advanced Study, the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute, the Society for the Preservation of the Greek Heritage, and the Pharos Arts Foundation.