Rachel Mairs is Professor of Classics and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Reading. She has previously held positions at New York University, the University of Oxford and Brown University. Her research focusses on ethnicity and multilingualism in Hellenistic Egypt and Central Asia, and the colonial history of archaeology in the Middle East. Her publications include Arabic Dialogues: Phrasebooks and the Learning of Colloquial Arabic, 1798-1945 (2024), The Hellenistic Far East: Archaeology, Language and Identity in Greek Central Asia(2014), Archaeologists, Tourists, Interpreters (with Maya Muratov, 2015) and From Khartoum to Jerusalem: The Dragoman Solomon Negima and his Clients (2016).