Classical archaeologist Sharon Herbert is renowned as a Hellenistic Near East scholar and academic leader. As curator of the U-M Kelsey Museum of Archaeology from 1979-93 and director from 1997-2013, Herbert expanded Kelsey's exhibitions, fieldwork and research, and oversaw the planning and construction of Kelsey's 20,000-foot Upjohn Exhibition Wing. She is president of the venerable W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, the oldest American research center for ancient near Eastern Studies in the Middle East, and vice president of the American Schools of Oriental Research.

Herbert earned a Ph.D. in classics at Stanford University and was a fellow at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens prior to joining U-M's faculty in 1973. A specialist in the study of pottery to glean information about ancient social and economic practices, she has played a crucial role in several Middle East excavations, including Israel's Tel Anafa, where she discovered that wealthy ethnically Phoenician residents decorated their villas in the latest Greek style.

Herbert has trained hundreds of students in the techniques of stratigraphic excavation and has chaired or co-chaired 20 dissertation committees and served on 20 others. She directed U-M's highly ranked Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaeology for nine years and was one of the first archaeologists to chair a major classics department in the United States.

Herbert has received the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies John H. D'Arms Award for Distinguished Graduate Mentoring, LSA's Ruth M. Sinclair Memorial Award for academic advising, the Michigan Association of Governing Boards of State Universities Distinguished Faculty Award, and the Tel Hai College Lifetime Achievement Award for contributions to Galilean archaeology. She has been awarded numerous grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and other funding agencies.