Laetitia La Follette, associate professor and chair of the department of history of art and architecture at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, was elected to a three-year term as president of the Archaeological Institute of America. Founded in 1879 and chartered by Congress in 1906, the Archaeological Institute of America is North America’s oldest and largest organization devoted to the world of archaeology, with some 200,000 members in the United States, Canada and overseas.
Dr. La Follette served as vice president for cultural heritage for the Archaeological Institute of America from 2011 to 2017. She specializes in the physical culture of the ancient Mediterranean.
A member of the faculty at the University of Massachusetts since 1987, Dr. La Follette has also focused on the protection of cultural heritage. She is the editor of Negotiating Culture: Heritage, Ownership, and Intellectual Property (University of Massachusetts Press, 2013).
Dr. La Follette is a graduate of Harvard University, where she majored in classics. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in art and archaeology from Princeton University.