Harvard University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences awarded the Centennial Medal to Sarah Morris, Steinmetz Professor of Classical Archaeology and Material Culture at UCLA and an archaeologist with the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. The award recognizes her scholarship in the classics and for her archaeological research.
 
“Sarah Morris has brought to light countless ancient artifacts at sites throughout the Mediterranean and produced scholarship that encompasses an impressive range of historical periods, in the process sparking new conversations and connections across disciplines, geographic areas, and historical periods to help us better understand the origins of Western civilization,” said Xiao-Li Meng, dean of  the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard. “We are proud to award her the 2017 Centennial Medal.”
 
A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Morris received her doctorate in classics at Harvard University, and taught at Yale University before joining the UCLA faculty in 1989, where she served as department chair at UCLA from 1997-2000 and chair of the Interdepartmental Ph.D. program in Archaeology at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology from 2001-2004. She was named Steinmetz Professor of Classical Archaeology and Material Culture at UCLA in 2001.
 
Her teaching and research interests include early Greek literature (Homer, Hesiod and Herodotus), Greek religion, prehistoric and early Greek archaeology, ceramics, Greek architecture and landscape studies, and Near Eastern influence on Greek art and culture.
 
The Centennial Medal was first awarded in June 1989 on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the graduate school. Each year, Harvard University, through the graduate school,  recognizes outstanding alumni whose contributions to knowledge, to their disciplines, to their colleagues, and to society have made a fundamental and lasting impact.