Most recently, Professor Halpern has been teaching Near Eastern and Biblical cultures and languages at University of Georgia, in the Departments of Religion and Linguistics, in Athens, GA, developing a Jewish Studies Program, and finishing a book on an 1805 dissertation that helped develop historical Biblical Studies.

His current research focuses on the interaction between a significant presence of stateless persons and the former administrative centers of Egypt’s empire in western Asia, ca. 1250-1000 BCE. It explores the regional context of Israel’s emergence, involved the reincorporation of these “vagabonds” (habiru, Biblical “hebrews”) into new states and cultural identities, via a process of retribalizations that should be understood globally, and particularly in a comparative dimension.

The beginnings of the project are found in two articles, the most developed of which is: “My Heart is to…”:  Some Cruxes in Identity Formation in Iron I Israel?  Pp. 977-1012 in Erez Ben-Yosef and Ian W. N. Jones, eds., “And in length of days understanding” (Job 12:12) - Essays on Archaeology in the 21st Century in Honor of Thomas E. Levy.  Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology, 3. London:  Springer, 2023.