Joann Fletcher

Fletcher got the Hawass ban lifted and was working again in the Valley of the Kings in April 2008.

Fletcher writes for The Guardian newspaper and the BBC History Online Web site (including major input into their multimedia project 'Death in Sakkara', which won the New Media Award in 2005) and has made numerous appearances on television and radio. She was lead investigator in the History Channel series Mummy Forensics and most recently was involved with Mummifying Alan: Egypt's Last Secret, a documentary for Channel 4 and Discovery, the subject of a long-term project that rewrites current understanding of mummification. This documentary won the 2011 Royal Television Society Award for Science and Natural History and also the BAFTA Award for Specialist Factual programme.

Fletcher designed the first UK GCSE equivalent qualification in Egyptology on behalf of the government education body in 2003 but the program ended in 2008. She is co-founder of the York University Mummy Research Group, with whom she has studied human remains from South America, Yemen, Italy, Ireland, the Canary Islands, and Egypt, including the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. She has undertaken excavation work in Egypt, Yemen, and the UK, and has examined mummies both on-site and in collections around the world.

In 2003, Fletcher and a multidisciplinary scientific team from the University of York, including the forensic anthropologist Don Brothwell, took part in an expedition to the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, sanctioned by Dr Zahi Hawass, then head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), where the hypothesis was put forward by Fletcher that one of the three mummies studied could be the mummified body of Queen Nefertiti, all three mummified bodies being found among a cache of mummies in tomb KV35 in 1898. This followed the team's scientific findings, and the hypothesis was included in the official report submitted to Hawass and the SCA shortly after the 2003 expedition. The expedition, the result of 12 years of research, was funded by the Discovery Channel, which also produced a documentary on the findings.

She also contributed to the new Egyptology galleries at the new Great North Museum in Newcastle, in Ancient Egypt Daily Life galleries at the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, in mummification exhibitions at Bolton and Burnley, and at Leiden's Rijksmuseum as part of their 1994 exhibition 'Clothing of the Pharaohs'.

She was graduated with a bachelor of arts (BA) degree in 1987. Her doctor of philosophy (PhD) degree was undertaken at the University of Manchester. Her doctoral thesis was on hair and wigs; it was entitled "Ancient Egyptian Hair: a study in style, form and function". Her PhD was completed in 1996.

Joann Fletcher (born 30 August 1966) is an Egyptologist and an honorary visiting professor in the department of archaeology at the University of York. She has published a number of books and academic articles, including on Cleopatra, and made numerous television and radio appearances. In 2003 she controversially claimed to have identified the mummy of Queen Nefertiti.

Fletcher was born on 30 August 1966 in Barnsley. She was educated at Barnsley College, a sixth form and further education college in Barnsley. She studied ancient history and Egyptology at University College London, specialising in the Ptolemaic dynasty and Cleopatra, and also in ancient Egyptian hair, wigs, and forms of adornment.