Coordinator of the Art Gallery
Alysia Fischer is an anthropologist, artist, educator, and curator whose interdisciplinary work brings together archaeology, material culture, craft, and the history and practice of glassmaking. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Arizona and an M.F.A. in Studio Art from Miami University, a combination that has shaped a career spanning academic research, teaching, archaeological fieldwork, and studio practice. She has extensive university teaching experience across multiple disciplines, and her teaching has received recognition for both excellence and her impact on students.
Fischer’s scholarship focuses especially on glass, glassworkers, and the ways that objects and technologies can illuminate human lives across time. Her research combines archaeology and ethnoarchaeology with direct engagement in glass studios, including fieldwork with glassworkers in Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Syria, Israel, and the United States. She has served as a glass specialist for archaeological projects in Israel and Jordan and has published widely on ancient glass production, craft, gender, and material culture. Her book Hot Pursuit: Integrating Anthropology in Search of Ancient Glass-blowers reflects her broader approach: bringing archaeological evidence into conversation with ethnographic observation and hands-on knowledge of making.
Alongside her archaeological scholarship, Fischer maintains an active creative and curatorial practice. Her recent research examines the history of the Studio Glass Movement in western North Carolina through oral histories, archival and ephemera documentation, exhibitions, and sustained engagement with artists and makers. She has curated exhibitions including North Carolina and the Studio Glass Movement, Glass Pioneers, and Mark Peiser: The Work Behind the Work, and her own artwork is represented by Momentum Gallery in Asheville, North Carolina. Across these activities, Fischer approaches making not simply as an artistic practice but as a form of inquiry—one that connects the knowledge of makers with larger questions about technology, community, history, and the meanings people create through material things.