Jodi Magness is the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 2017 to 2020, she served as president of the Archaeological Institute of America. In addition to Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, her research interests include ancient pottery, ancient synagogues, and the Roman army in the East. She has participated in over twenty different excavations in Israel and Greece, including as codirector of the 1995 excavations in the Roman siegeworks at Masada. Since 2011 she has directed excavations at Huqoq in Israel's Galilee.
