Stephen McPhillips is an archaeologist specialised in Islamic periods, focusing on landscapes and the rural world in the Middle East. He completed his PhD at the University of Sydney on a corpus of pottery excavated in the Citadel of Damascus, highlighting the important role that city played in the development of new ceramic technologies between the 9th and 13th centuries. He has worked on and directed field projects in Syria, Lebanon, and in Saudi Arabia, and he taught for over eight years at the University of Copenhagen.
From 2021 to 2024 he was responsible for Islamic archaeology in the CNRS Khaybar Longue Durée Archaeological Project, a major study of an important oasis in northwestern Arabia. He is now leading a new initiative, the Islamic Khaybar Archaeological Project, which will expand the investigation of sites newly identified in the core of the oasis.