Professor Kersel is an archaeologist with a doctorate from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge and a Master of Historic Preservation from the University of Georgia. She is a field archaeologist who has worked in Israel, Jordan, and Palestine and is interested in the relationship between cultural heritage law, archaeological sites and objects, and local interaction. Her research interests include the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age of the eastern Mediterranean and Levant, cultural heritage protection, museums, and archaeological tourism. Her work combines archaeological, archival, and oral history research in order to understand the efficacy of cultural heritage law in protecting archaeological landscapes from looting.
She is co-director of the Galilee Prehistory Project and the Follow the Pots Project (https://followthepotsproject.org/) - tracing the movement of Early Bronze Age pots from the Dead Sea Plain in Jordan.