Associate Director, Center for MIddle Eastern and North African Studies; George G. Cameron Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Civilization and Languages and Civilizations
About
I examine language and history, focusing on the texts produced in cuneiform cultures during the third and second millennia B.C.E. My research investigates Sumerian language and literature, multilingualism, ancient modes of translation, scribal and scholarly practices, lexicography, knowledge production and transfer, historiography, and social networks.
I choose to study and teach the ancient Middle East (roughly ancient Iraq and Syria) because of the vast amounts of contextualized data available mostly on hundreds of thousands of clay tablets of various kinds over three thousand years. There is no shortage of research possibilities. My work incorporates the technological tools and methodologies (digital humanities) to clarify and explore these datasets, answering some questions, and raising yet more possibilities.
