Assistant Director, The Mesoamerica Center
Astrid Runggaldier is the Assistant Director for the Mesoamerica Center and oversees programming of educational, scholarly, and public activities for the Mesoamerica Center at UT Austin and Casa Herrera in Antigua, Guatemala. Dr. Runggaldier is a Mesoamericanist interested in particular in Maya culture and in anthropological approaches to architecture, households, and built environments in the context of the ancient civilizations of the Americas. She holds a doctorate in archaeology from Boston University with a dissertation on the architecture of the Maya site of San Bartolo, has extensive field experience in Guatemala and Belize, and has been leading study abroad programs in Central America for UT Austin and other US institutions for several years. Following administrative and teaching experiences at Boston University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Skidmore College, Dr. Runggaldier joined UT Austin and the Mesoamerica Center in 2012 as lecturer and faculty leader of international programming. Since then, she has undertaken management of daily operations and of special initiatives for the Mesoamerica Center. She additionally manages UT’s Art and Art History Collection of Pre-Columbian artifacts and ethnographic textiles from the Americas, and contributes to the teaching of undergraduate classes in the Department of Art and Art History.