Talks

Keynotes and Special Lectures

  • The MTAAC Project: Machine Translation and Automated Analysis of Cuneiform Languages (online Keynote, 4th GSANES, Yale, 4–5 March 2022)
  • City, Cult, and Kingship in First Millennium BC Babylonia (Keynote, 65th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, theme “Gods, Kings and Capitals in the Ancient Near East,” Paris, 8–12 July 2019)
  • The Babylonian city in long-term perspective: investigating urban processes using texts and archaeology (ANŠE Lecture, Department of Near Eastern Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 20 April 2015)
  • Making an empire: Neo-Assyrian craftsmen and other workers (Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies A. K. Grayson Lecture on Assyrian History and Culture. University of Toronto, 14 January 2015)
  • Urban landscapes and domestic space: the Neo-Babylonian house in its setting (British School of Archaeology in Iraq lecture, The British Academy, London, 24 March 2004)

Invited Conference Papers and Guest Lectures

  • Investigating inequality in urban Babylonia (online Ancient Near East Seminar, University of Oxford, 9 March 2021)
  • Priestly Households: Their Social and Economic Status in First Millennium BC Babylonia (online workshop “Priests and Profits,” Ghent, 17–18 December 2020)
  • Investigating the Urban Poor in First Millennium BC Babylonia (online workshop “Living Under Empires: A View from Below,” Helsinki University, 1–2 December 2020)
  • Planning Versus Process in Urban Babylonia: City Layout in a Long-Term Perspective (online workshop “The Shape of Mesopotamian Cities: Archaeological and Philological Approaches,” Tsukuba, 28 November 2020)
  • Management of Resources in Mesopotamia: the View from the First Millennium BC (workshop on “Management of Resources and Taxation,” Prague, 6–7 May 2019)
  • Minorities in Assyria: Investigating Social Identities Using the PNA Dataset (workshop on “Minorities in Mesopotamia,” Finnish Institute for the Middle East, Beirut, 8–9 April 2019)
  • Modelling Processes of Neighbourhood Change in Urban Babylonia (conference on ‘The Archaeology of Neighbourhood Life. Concepts, Communities, and Change,’ ISAW NYU, 14 December 2018)
  • Religious Practice in Urban Babylonia: the Spatial Context (guest lecture, Université du Québec à Montréal, 15 October 2018).
  • Assyrian Names in Babylonian Texts (lecture and workshop presented at the Onomastics Training Week organised by the Persia and Babylonia Project in Venice, 29 May–1 June)
  • Journey to the Late Babylonian city: the final phases of Mesopotamian urbanism (conference on ‘Cities in the Ancient World’, Penn Museum, Philadelphia, 20–21 April 2018)
  • The economic interests of Urukean scholars (TOPOI workshop ‘Scholars, Priests and Temples – Babylonian and Egyptian Science in Context,’ Berlin, 12 May 2016)
  • Urban Babylonia: Settlement and Society in a Long-Term Perspective (Historisches Seminar, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, 4 May 2016)
  • What do we do with all of the data in The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire? (workshop ‘Ancient History: Assyriological Perspectives,’ Brown University, Department of Egyptology & Assyriology, 26–27 February 2016)
  • Neo-Assyrian administration in the Southern Levant: the view from the centre (workshop ‘The Southern Levant Under Assyrian Domination,’ Ben Zvi Institute, Jerusalem, 11–12 November 2015)
  • The spatial context of religious practice in urban Babylonia (guest lecture, Dept. of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, 9 November 2015)
  • Looking for slaves in Assyria (workshop ‘Between Slavery and Freedom: Aspects of Manumission in the Ancient World. The Ancient Near East, Greece, and Rome,’ Edinburgh, 1 May 2015)
  • Communicating kingship: the Assyrian ruler and his people (workshop ‘The Legitimation of Autocracy in the Ancient World,’ NYU Abu Dhabi, 2–3 November 2014)
  • ‘Go out, evil!’ The Mesopotamian house as a setting for ritual activity (workshop ‘Exploring Ritual in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean: Performance, Texts, and Material Culture,’ ISAW, New York, 16 May 2014)
  • The Babylonian temples: continuity, change, and politics (conference ‘Xerxes and Babylonia: the Cuneiform Evidence,’ Leiden, 16–17 January 2014)
  • various short discussion papers (workshop ‘Living in the Multicultural Society of Iron Age Mesopotamia: the Case of the Egyptians,’ Castelen, Switzerland, 31 October–3 November 2013)
  • The historical topography of Neo-Babylonian and Hellenistic Uruk: archaeology and text in the study of urban form (8th ICDOG ‘Uruk – Altorientalische Metropole und Kulturzentrum,’ Berlin, 25– 26 April 2013)
  • Family structure, household cycle, and the social use of domestic space in urban Babylonia (Oriental Institute Symposium ‘Household Studies in Complex Societies: (Micro) Archaeological and Textual Approaches,’ Chicago, 15–16 March 2013)
  • At home in the Babylonian city: new light on domestic housing and urban living conditions (Mesopotamian Seminar, University of Cambridge, 20 November 2012)
  • Babylonian archives and libraries of the first millennium BC (Advanced Seminar in the Humanities guest lecture, Venice International University, 29 October–3 November 2012)
  • Keeping up appearances: prestige in the built environment of urban Babylonia (guest lecture, Graduiertenkolleg ‘Formen von Prestige in Kulturen des Altertums,’ Ludwig- Maximilians-Universität, Munich, 21 June 2012)
  • Babylonian housing: the social use of domestic space (guest lecture, Dept. of Egyptology and Ancient Western Asian Studies, Brown University, 16 April 2012)
  • Slavery and personhood in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (conference ‘Being Nobody? Understanding Slavery Thirty Years After Slavery and Social Death,’ Brown University, 13–15 April 2012)
  • Family, private property and the state in first millennium BC Mesopotamia (ESF Exploratory Workshop ‘Dynamics of Production and Economic Interaction in the Near East in the First Half of the 1st Millennium BCE,’ Lille, 28–30 June 2011)
  • Hellenistic Uruk: temple and community in the light of texts and archaeology (guest lecture, Dept. of World Cultures, University of Helsinki, 4 April 2011)
  • Hellenistic Uruk: temple and community in the light of texts and archaeology (guest lecture, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Seminar für Sprachen und Kulturen des vorderen Orients: Assyriologie & Exzellenzcluster ‘Asia and Europe,’ 1 July 2010)
  • Planning palaces, building empires: the role of the ruler in disseminating architectural forms in 1st millennium BC Mesopotamia (4. Treffen des Forschungsfeldes 4 des Cluster 3: ‘Orte der Herrschaft,’ DAI, Rome, 29 April–1 May 2010)
  • Housing the Babylonians: domestic architecture in its social setting (guest lecture, Institut für Orientalistik, Vienna, 7 January 2010)
  • The Babylonian cities: investigating urban morphology (TPOPOI workshop ‘Urban Topology as a Reflection of Society. Language, Image, Archaeology,’ Berlin, 18–19 June 2009)
  • Temple and community in Hellenistic Uruk: a study in spatial organization (guest lecture, Kolloquium Alter Orient, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, 19 May 2009)
  • Temple and city in Hellenistic Uruk: sacred space and the transformation of Late Babylonian society (ESF exploratory workshop ‘Redefining the Sacred: Religious Identity, Ritual Practice, and Sacred Architecture in the Near East and Egypt, 1000 BC–AD 300,’ Oxford, 19–21 March)
  • Dwelling in southern Mesopotamia: new perspectives from ancient Uruk (symposium ‘Dwelling in Temporal Perspective,’ Institute of Advanced Study & Department of Archaeology, Durham University, 14 March 2009)
  • Modern views on ancient Babylon: myth and reality (Akademie der bildenden Künste, Institut für Kunst und Architektur, Vienna, 3 November 2008)
  • Bridging the gap: texts and archaeology in the reconstruction of the Babylonian cities (Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations & Center for Ancient Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 12 May 2008)
  • Urban Babylonia in the first millennium BC: towards a reconstruction (Orientalisches Seminar, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg, 4 February 2008)
  • Reconstructing the urban landscape of Babylonia in the first millennium BC (Dept. of Assyriology and Hebrew, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, 2 April 2007)
  • Reconstructing the urban environment of Babylonia in the first millennium BC (Ancient Near East Seminar, Oriental Institute, Oxford, 21 November 2006)
  • The meaning and function of kuruppu: a new feature in the urban landscape of Babylonia (Dept. of History, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, 3 July 2006)
  • Uruk after Gilgamesh: bringing the first millennium city to life (London Centre for the Ancient Near East, SOAS, London, 20 March 2006)
  • The urban landscape in Babylonia in the first millennium BC (Dept. of Assyriology & Hittitology, Warsaw, 9 May 2005)
  • A new look at the Neo-Babylonian house (Dept. of History, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, 5 May 2005)
  • The urban landscape in Babylonia in the first millennium BC (Dept. of History, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, 5 May 2005)
  • Sanitation in the Babylonian cities (Institut für Orientalistik, Vienna, 27 April 2005)
  • Continuity and change between the Neo-Babylonian and the early Achaemenid period from the perspective of the Babylonian private archival tablets (‘First International Conference on Ancient Cultural Relations Between Iran and Western Asia,’ Tehran, 16–18 August 2003)
  • The use of writing in the Neo- and Late-Babylonian periods (conference ‘Symposium for the Fifth Millennium of the Invention of Writing in Mesopotamia,’ Baghdad, 23 March 2001)
  • Mettre en ligne les textes babyloniens (with F. Joannès and M. Stolper) (conference ‘Histoire achéménide et bases de données sur Internet,’ Collège de France, Paris, 16 December 2000)
  • Neo- and Late-Babylonian prebend texts (British Museum symposium ‘Ancient Mesopotamian Finance,’ London, 20 September 1996)

Conference Papers

  • Reconstructing Ancient Babylon: Myth and Reality (Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies Annual Symposium, theme “Babylon: Perceptions Ancient and Modern.” Toronto, 5 October 2019)
  • “The Fear of God and King”: Foreigners and the State of Assyria (Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies Annual Symposium, theme “Other Lands, Strangers, and Xenophobia in the Ancient Near East.” Toronto, 29 September 2018)
  • Neo-Assyrian personal names in context: onomastic research using the PNA dataset (workshop ‘Methodological Developments in Prosopographical Studies,’ 64th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale. Innsbruck, 16–20 July 2018)
  • Introducing the MTAAC project: Machine Translation and Automated Analysis of Cuneiform Languages (64th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale. Innsbruck, 16–20 July 2018)
  • (with É. Pagé-Perron) Machine Translation and Automated Analysis of Cuneiform Languages (contributions to workshop “Building International Bridges Through Digital Scholarship: The Trans-Atlantic Platform Digging Into Data Challenge Experience,” DH2018 Conference, Mexico City, 25 June 2018)
  • Quantifying the use of space in the Babylonian house of the first millennium BC (ASOR Annual Meeting, Boston, 15–18 November 2017)
  • Neo-Assyrian Prosopography: Past, Present, and Future (63rd Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Marburg, 24–28 July 2017)
  • The use of writing boards in Assyria (CSMS Symposium ‘Ancient Near Eastern Archives: Dealing with Incomplete Datasets,’ Toronto, 1 October 2016)
  • The historical topography of Ur in the first millennium BC (62nd RAI ‘Ur in the 21st Century CE,’ Philadelphia, 11–15 July 2016)
  • Domestic space and private enterprise in urban Babylonia (10th ICAANE, workshop ‘Working at Home in the Ancient Near East,’ Vienna, 25–29 April 2016)
  • A Neo-Babylonian plan of a temple and its captions: BM 68840+ Reconstructed (61st RAI, theme ‘Text and Image,’ Geneva and Bern, 22–26 June 2015)
  • Gifts and bribes in 1st millennium BC Mesopotamia (5th International Conference of the Research Network ‘Imperium and Officium,’ theme ‘Governing Ancient Empires,’ Vienna, 5–7 November 2014)
  • Neo-Assyrian Letters and Administration (American Philological Association annual meeting, session ‘The Power of the Written Word: Cross-Cultural Comparisons’ by leaders of the Research Network ‘Imperium and Officium,’ Chicago, 2–5 January 2014)
  • The Late Babylonian house: tablet and trench in harmony? (conference ‘Between Words and Walls: Material and Textual Approaches to Housing in the Graeco-Roman World,’ Birkbeck College, London, 29–30 August 2013)
  • Disordered states? Homeland security in the Neo-Assyrian empire (59th RAI ‘Law and (Dis)order,’ Ghent, 15–19 July 2013)
  • Land and power in Assyria (3rd International Conference of the Research Network ‘Imperium and Officium,’ theme ‘Land and Power in the Ancient and Post-Ancient World,’ Vienna, 20–22 February 2013)
  • Doing business in Assyria: private, state, or a grey area? (58th RAI ‘Private and State,’ Leiden, 16–20 July 2012)
  • New approaches to the archaeology of the Babylonian household (BANEA Annual Conference ‘New Directions in the Ancient Near East,’ Manchester, 8–10 June 2012)
  • The spatial context of religious practice in first millennium BC Mesopotamia (8th ICAANE, Warsaw, 30 April–4 May 2012)
  • The anatomy of a Neo-Assyrian palace archive (2nd conference of the Research Network ‘Imperium and Officium,’ theme ‘Administration, Law and Administrative Law,’ Vienna, 24–26 November 2011)
  • The transmission of offices, professions and crafts within the family in the Neo- Assyrian period (57th RAI ‘Innovation and Tradition in the Ancient Near East,’ workshop ‘From Parents to Children,’ Rome, 4–8 July 2011)
  • ‘I razed, destroyed and burned those cities’: deliberate architectural destruction in the context of Assyrian imperial expansion and conquest (conference ‘The Politics of Architectural Destruction,’ NUI Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland, 23–24 May 2011)
  • Crafts and the Mesopotamian city: specialisation and urban spatial organisation (BANEA Annual Conference, University of East Anglia, 6–8 January 2011)
  • Doing the king’s work: perceptions of service in the Neo-Assyrian royal correspondence (1st Conference of the Research Network ‘Imperium and Officium,’ theme ‘Official Epistolography and the Language(s) of Power,’ Vienna, 10–12 November 2010)
  • The real meaning of ṭuppi (56th RAI ‘Time and History in the Ancient Near East,’ Barcelona, 26–30 July 2010)
  • Accommodating the family: house size, household complexity and “working from home” (55th RAI ‘Family in the Ancient Near East: Realities, Symbolisms, and Images,’ Collège de France, Paris, 6–9 July 2009)
  • Mind your step: access and exclusion as representations of power and control (54th RAI ‘Organisation, Repräsentation und Symbole von Macht in Altvorderasien,’ Würzburg, 20–25 July 2008)
  • Modelling urban form and urban development: quantitative data in the study of the Babylonian cities (START Project Symposium ‘Too much data?,’ Vienna, 17–19 July 2008)
  • Family, household and neighbourhood structure in Hellenistic Babylonia (workshop ‘Cross-Cultural Approaches to Family and Household Structures in the Ancient World,’ ISAW, New York, 9–10 May 2008)
  • Beyond planning: how the Babylonian city was formed (53rd RAI ‘Language’ and ‘City administration,’ Moscow & St Petersburg, 23–28 July 2007)
  • Reconstructing ancient Babylon: problems and prospects (Archäologie & Computer 11: ‘Kulturelles Erbe und Neue Technologien,’ Workshop 2: ‘How to Publish “Old” Excavations With New Technologies 2,’ Vienna, 18–20 October 2006)
  • Babylonian city walls in a historical and cross-cultural perspective (52nd RAI ‘Krieg und Frieden im Alten Vorderasien,’ Münster, 17–21 July 2006)
  • Towards a reconstruction of the urban environment in first millennium BC Babylonia (5th ICAANE, Madrid, 3–8 April 2006)
  • Unbuilt space: a question of land use in the Babylonian cities of the first millennium BC (BANEA Annual Conference, Edinburgh, 5–7 January 2006)
  • Characterising urban space and comparing neighbourhoods: the Babylonian cities in the first millennium BC (51st RAI ‘Classifications of Knowledge in the Ancient Near East: Lexicography, Iconography, Stratigraphy,’ Chicago, 18–22 July 2005)
  • The social dimensions of Babylonian domestic architecture in the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid periods (conference ‘The World of Achaemenid Persia,’ British Museum, London, 29 September–1 October 2005)
  • Streets and alleys in the Babylonian cities of the first millennium BC (BANEA Annual Conference, Oxford, 7–8 January 2005)