Aidan Dodson was born in London and brought up in Slough, Berkshire. He studied Egyptology at Durham, Liverpool and Cambridge Universities, obtaining his BA in 1985, his MPhil in 1986 and his PhD in 1995; he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2003. He has taught in the Department of Archaeology & Anthropology at Bristol University, where he is now a Senior Research Fellow, since 1996. During the Spring semester of 2013 he was William K. and Marilyn M. Simpson Professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo.Over the years he has given invited public lectures in the UK, the USA, Canada, Egypt, Denmark, Italy and Spain, and regularly accompanies tours to Egypt and the Sudan. Having joined the London-based Egypt Exploration Society at the age of 15, he was elected its Chairman of Trustees in December 2011. Dr Dodson met his wife while teaching her Egyptology at an adult education class and proposed to her in the burial chamber of an ancient vizier; they live in Bristol.