Michael A. Anderson (PhD, Cambridge) is Assistant Professor of Archeology in the Classics Department at SF State University and Director, Via Consolare Project, Pompeii. He has more than 15 years of experience in archaeological research, having worked as Field Director of the University of Bradford’s excavations (2002-2006), and has also worked on Pre-historic Malta and Iron-Age Scotland with the University of Cambridge (2004-6), and in Egypt with the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (1998). His research interests include urban life of early Roman Empire; ancient domestic space, Roman material culture, architecture and art, excavation methodology and practice, geographical information systems (GIS), archaeological survey and the application of digital and computing technologies to archaeological research. His publications include The Casa del Chirurgo (VI i, 9-10.23). AAPP Final Reports Volume 1 (with D. Robinson) (In Preparation); “Disruption or Continuity? The Spatio-Visual Evidence of Post Earthquake Pompeii” in Pompeii: Cultural Standards, Practical Needs (In Press); “Putting the Reality in Virtual Reality: New Advances through Game Engine Technology’ in Layers of Perception (2008), and “Houses, GIS and the Micro-Topology of Pompeian Domestic Space” in Proceedings of the 14th Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference (2005). 

Luciano Chessa (SF Conservatory, PhD musicology, UC Davis; DMA piano and MA composition, Conservatory of Bologna). As a composer, conductor, pianist, and musical saw/Vietnamese dan bau soloists, Luciano Chessa has been active in Europe, the US, and Australia. Recent compositions include A Heavenly Act, an opera with video by Kalup Linzy commissioned by the SFMOMA and premiered by the Ensemble Paralléle. As a music historian Chessa completed Luigi Russolo Futurist. Noise, Visual Arts, and the Occult, the first monograph on the Futurist Russolo's Art of Noise, out on UC Press in March 2012. Chessa's Futurist expertise resulted in an invitation from New York's PERFORMA to direct/conduct the first reconstruction of Russolo's earliest intonarumori orchestra. The production was hailed by The New York Times as one of the best events in the arts of 2009; in March 2011 Chessa presented it in a sold out concert for Berliner Festspiele-Maerzmusik Festival; in December 2011 Chessa conducted it with the New World Symphony as part of Art Basel | Miami Beach.

Gary Devore (PhD, University of Bradford, UK) is a Fellow in the Humanities and teaches at Stanford University.  He spent over fifteen years excavating in Pompeii.  From 2005-2009 he was a co-founder and co-director of the Pompeii Archaeological Research Project Porta Stabia, a project revealing the dynamic structural and social history of an entire working-class city block of Pompeii.  He is now a co-director and principal investigator of new excavations starting in the UK at the Roman fort and town of Binchester (County Durham).  His research interests include Greek and Roman archeology, history, and cultural studies, particularly of the subaltern. His latest publication is “The Fifth Season of Excavations at VIII.7.1-15 and the Porta Stabia at Pompeii: Preliminary report" (2010).

Susie Fong (Harpsichord) is active as a harpsichord soloist and continuo player and has participated in such festivals and workshops as the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute, American Bach Soloists Summer Academy, Vancouver Early Music Festival, and SFEMS. She has performed regularly as part of the SFCM Baroque Ensemble, including its concert version of Handel’s Alcina in 2011. Susie has an MM in Harpsichord Performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Corey Jamason, and received her BA in Music at UC Berkeley, where she studied harpsichord with Laurette Goldberg and played in the Collegium Musicum. Susie is also an accomplished solo and chamber pianist, having studied with Audrey Grigsby and Robert Rios in Southern California. She currently performs in the Bay Area as part of Liaison as well as The Vinacessi Ensemble, and teaches harpsichord both privately and in the SFCM Preparatory and Adult Extension Division.

ALTAIR4 MULTIMEDIA was organized in 1986 by Alessandro Furlan, Pietro Galifi, and Stefano Moretti, who conceived the studio as an actual workshop where various technological and artistic disciplines would interact in a coordinated and rewarding dialogue. In multimedia technology, Altair4 found a new and more organic means of communication, where the fusion of different methodologies and disciplines such as art, architecture and archaeology lead to the formulation of new “synthesis” languages and a new understanding of the work in which we live. Altair4 has produced a wide range of 3D archaeological reconstructions, from Ancient Egypt and Greece and Pompeii to the Renaissance era, for use in Museums, Television Production, Internet, Interactive DVD-VIDEO/ROMs, Ipod and VideoMobile.. WWW.ALTAIR4.COM

Anne-Kathryn Olsen (Soprano) has performed in Austria, Germany, Czech Republic, and in Hungary as a soloist with the Desert Spring Chorale, performing Mozart’s Credo Mass. She performed as a soloist at the 2011 Toronto Summer Baroque Institute in Charpentier’s Messe des Morts and also at Phoenix Symphony, Arizona Ballet, American Bach Phoenix, Phoenix Early Music Society, Arizona State Baroque Ensemble, and Academy of Baroque Opera in Seattle. Locally she has appeared with Voices of Music (as a winner of the Young Artist Competition,) San Francisco Choral Artists, Oakland Civic Orchestra, Opera San Jose, and Starlite Vineyard Chamber Music Series. Her operatic credits include Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare and Oberto in Alcina with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Baroque Ensemble, as well as Lucy in Telephone and The Dew Fairy in Hansel and Gretel. She is a member of Liaison, a chamber group specializing in French baroque repertoire. Her Bachelor’s is from the Herberger School of Fine Arts at Arizona State University and Master’s from San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Stephanie Pearson (History of Art, UC Berkeley) completed her M.A. on the sculptural technique of ancient Gandhara (modern-day Pakistan) and is currently writing her dissertation on Roman wall painting and its artistic borrowings from Hellenistic Greece and Egypt. Questions of cross-cultural interaction and artistic technique and process count among her main research interests. Alongside her own studies, Stephanie has enjoyed the opportunity to assistant-teach courses on various topics (including Roman painting and Etruscan art and archaeology) and to conduct field work around the Mediterranean — most importantly at Pompeii, where she has worked with the Via Consolare Project for four years. She is very active in the Archaeological Institute of America, having chaired sessions and presented papers in a number of the annual conferences and now in professional service at the national level as well as in the San Francisco Chapter.

J. Theodore Peña (PhD, University of Michigan) is Professor of Classics at UC Berkeley. His research interests include Roman archaeology, the ancient economy, material culture studies, and pottery analysis. He has participated in the direction of archaeological excavations at Statonia, a small Etrusco-Roman town in the Tiber Valley, and on the Palatine Hill, in downtown Rome. He is currently in the initial stages of a long-term research project that will investigate aspects of the life history of artifacts at Pompeii. He is perhaps best known as the author of Roman Pottery in the Archaeological Record (2007), a book-length essay that reconstructs the life cycle of pottery in the Roman world with a view to helping archaeologists better understand how Roman pottery came to be incorporated in archaeological deposits. Some of his recent publications on Pompeii include “The production and distribution of pottery at Pompeii: a review of the evidence. American Journal of Archaeology 113.1:57-59, 113.2:165-201 (with M. McCallum, 2009), and “A reinterpretation of two groups of tituli picti from Pompeii and environs: Sicilian wine, not flour and hand-picked olives.” Journal of Roman Archaeology 20:233-254 (2007).