Meredith Nelson is a doctoral student from Rye, New York. She received her BA in Art History from Barnard College in 2007, and her MA in Art History and Archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU in 2009. She specializes in art, archaeology, and material culture from the Roman period to the early Middle Ages, with a particular interest in jewelry and metalwork, and its relation to broader issues of gender, status, and ethnicity. She has held internships and research positions in the departments of Medieval Art and European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She also participated in the excavation of a Roman period fort, located in South Shields, England.