Matthew J. Adams is an archaeologist and historian specializing in the ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean. He is Director of The Center for the Mediterranean World and a Research Fellow at the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies at the University of Haifa. He is a longtime co-director of the Megiddo Expedition and the Jezreel Valley Regional Project, and co-directs the Mendes Expedition in Egypt. He served as Director of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem from 2014 to 2022.

His research focuses on Egypt and the southern Levant, including urbanism and state formation, Egyptian-Levantine interaction, stratigraphy and chronology, and Roman military archaeology. His work combines excavation and ceramic analysis with scientific approaches and digital field documentation.

His ceramic specialties include the Early Bronze Age, Intermediate Bronze Age, and Middle Bronze Age of the southern Levant, especially the Jezreel Valley, and the Early Dynastic, Old Kingdom, and First Intermediate Period in Egypt. He holds a Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University and serves as an editor and series editor for archaeological publications.