Irene Winter received her BA in Anthropology from Barnard College; her MA in Near Eastern Languages and Literature from the University of Chicago; and her PhD in Art History from Columbia University. She excavated in Iran from 1967 to 1974 and has traveled extensively in the Middle East and in South Asia. She has taught at Queens College, CUNY, 1971-1976, The University of Pennsylvania, 1976-1988, and Harvard University, 1988-2009. In 1983, she received a MacArthur Prize, and she delivered the Slade Lectures at Cambridge in 1997. From 1993 to 1996, she served as Chair of the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University, and served on the Faculty Council from 2006-2009. She was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2016.