Mekayla May

Mekayla May (she/her) is a current PhD student at the University of Maryland, studying Roman art and archaeology with Dr. Maryl B. Gensheimer. She received her MA degree from UMD in May 2023, and a BA in Art History and Classics from Emory University in May 2020, summa cum laude. Her Master’s thesis discussed Roman oscilla, double-sided marble reliefs suspended in the intercolumniations of predominantly domestic peristyles and atria of the 1st to early 2nd centuries CE. She examined the objects’ mutability and multifaceted engagement with Roman visitors as suspended objects in the social nuclei of the house through an experiential methodology. Recently, she presented parts of her thesis at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, for which she was also awarded the Craft Fellowship by the AIA-DC chapter.

Mekayla has been a part of the American Excavations at Samothrace team since 2019, excavating in the Sanctuary of the Great Gods and the City Walls, working as Registrar, and helping understand the contexts on the Stoa terrace for its upcoming publication. Her current project involves making a chronological map of one of the secular areas of the Sanctuary, the so-called Lower Stoa, which was a series of dining facilities built and re-built  heavily in the Roman period of occupation of the site. She also has begun working with the Restoring Ancient Stabiae project run through the Architecture Department at UMD as a Research Assistant, and she is eager to join them on-site in Summer 2024 as a Co-Instructor.

Mekayla’s research interests include domestic decoration, especially recontextualizing objects into space and social interactions, archival research, and provincial interactions with a “Roman” identity.