skip to content
 

The Cambridge Mesopotamian Community is a vibrant hub of events and activities of many kinds, from public outreach to collaborations with artists, appearances in the media, and innovative teaching projects.  

To give prospective students and other interested parties an idea of what goes on, we are keeping a record, starting in Autumn 2015, of initiatives over and above teaching and the Tuesday seminar series.

The COVID19 pandemic called a halt to most activities, but we hope to post more, starting in autumn of 2021.

2018-2019

April: Christina Tsouparopoulou in Greece for museum work, to study Common Mitanni cylinder seals.

Selena Wisnom's work on Babylonian Liver Divination featured in The Times Diary.

March/April: Augusta McMahon, PhD student Alex Barker, and MPhil student Jim Blundell excavate at Lagash, in Sumer (s Iraq).

March: Selena Wisnom's work on Babylonian Liver Divination featured on Resonance FM.

- Students features in Behind the Scenes video for The Poor Man of Nippur, supported by the University Impact Fund.

- Laerke Recht and Augusta McMahon organise two-day conference on Animal Encounters in the Ancient Near East at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

- Nancy Highcock organises the 2019 edition of the Egypt and Mesopotamia Conference for sixth formers, featuring Selena Wisnom and PhD students Alex Loktionov and George Heath-Whyte.  Gallery tours of the British Museum led by Undergraduate and MPhil student volunteers.

- Marie Besnier premières Mesopotamian Irrigation game at the Cambridge Science Festival, with help from Undergraduate and MPhil volunteers.

- Nancy Highcock and a PhD student in Materials Science ran a public event "The 'Stuff of Legends: 5000 Years of Material Science" at the Science Festival.

February/March: Selena Wisnom's immersive play Ashurbanipal: the last great king of Assyria was performed at The Crypt Gallery, Euston.

February: 5-person Assyriological team from the Ludwig-Maximilans-Universität in Munich led by Professor Karen Radner visited the Division and gave a series of classes.

November: Launch of the Poor Man of Nippur film, with ensuing media coverage of the project.

- Undergraduate students featured in Assyriology as a University Subject video, sponsored by the University Impact Fund.

- Study visit to the British Museum Ashurbanipal exhibition for all Assyriology students (Undergrad, MPhil and Doctoral).

- Launch of Cambridge Assyriology on social media.

- Marie Besnier reads Gudea inscriptions in the original Sumerian with children at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, as part of the Festival of Ideas.  Selena Wisnom and PhD student George Heath-Whyte act as helpers.

- Launch of Strategic Partnership between Cambridge Assyriology and the Ludwig-Maximilans-Universität in Munich.

- PhD student George Heath-Whyte undertakes research visit to Leiden, to learn about the ProsoBab database.

- Selena Wisnom quoted in The Times on a new fragment of Gilgamesh.

October: PhD student Alex Loktionov runs Cuneiform writing workshop at Festival of Ideas, assisted by Selena Wisnom and MPhil students.

2017-2018

July-September: Guo Honggeng (Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing) in Cambridge as Visiting Scholar at the McDonald Institute.

June: Academic visit to the British Museum, with tours of the Mesopotamian galleries and handling tablets in the Arched room.  Also, visit to Trafalgar Square to read the cuneiform inscription on the new Fourth Plinth sculpture.

March: Selena Wisnom and Laure Bonner organise the 2018 edition of the Egypt and Mesopotamia Conference for sixth formers, featuring Kate Spence, Selena Wisnom, Alex Loktionov, PhD student Akshyeta Suryanarayan, and Cambridge Assyriology Alumna Yaǧmur Heffron.  Gallery tours of the British Museum led by Undergraduate and MPhil student volunteers.

- Cambridge University Library releases video A Stray Sumerian Tablet, featuring Nicholas Postgate.

- Andrew George holds lecture in Trinity College on his newly discovered Gilgamesh fragment.

February: Selena Wisnom gives public lecture at the Glanville Lecture Study Day at the Fitzwilliam Museum.

November: Andrew George (SOAS, University of London) gives an all-day masterclass on copying Cuneiform tablets to a mixed audience of Undergrad, MPhil and Doctoral students

October: 4-hour reading seminar "Sumerian Crime Stories" on 25th Oct. by Dr Vitali Bartash, University of Munich (convened by Christoph Schmidhuber).

Cuneiform-writing stall as part of the Festival of Ideas (21st Oct), run by two PhD students, two staff members, and an affiliated scholar (convened by Peerapat Ouysook).

2016-2017 

September: Replica of the Black Obelisk moved from Asian and Middle Eastern Studies to Archaeology.

June: Filming The Poor Man of Nippur.

- Prof. Tzvi Abusch, visiting scholar at St John's Scholar, gives extracurricular reading sessions on the first incantation in Maqlû and on the second šuilla prayer to Nergal.

- Academic visit to the British Museum, with tours of the Mesopotamian galleries and conservation department, and handling tablets in the Ur project room.

April: Dr Henry Stadhouders invited to Cambridge from 24th to 28th April to run extracurricular Akkadian reading sessions on KAR 223, Egalkura incantations, and a medical text.

- Lynette Talbot runs an hour-long session on Akkadian and Hammurabi's Lawcode at a widening participation event for four schools in Islington.

March: Marie Besnier and Lynette Talbot each present a Mesopotamian-themed stall at the Science Festival in the McDonald Institute (attended by c. 1000 children and parents).

Second edition of the Egypt/Mesopotamia Conference for Sixth Formers (attended by 59 school students, parents and teachers).

- Marie Besnier's board game Esagil: Treasure Hunt in Babylon presented to the public at a 'Family First Saturday' at the Fitzwilliam Museum.

February: a staff member gives talk on Assyriology at the Godolphin and Latymer school Ancient World Breakfast Club.

January: the University's Teaching and Learning Innovation Fund agrees to sponsor the creation of high-fidelity replicas of cuneiform inscriptions in the British Museum (the Taylor Prism, Ištar's Descent and a tablet of Hammurapi laws in Neo-Assyrian script) for use in teaching.

November: Andrew George (SOAS, University of London) gives a four-hour masterclass on copying Cuneiform tablets to a mixed audience of Undergrad, MPhil and Doctoral students.

- Martin Worthington featured in BBC radio 4 programme In Our Time.

October: Marie Besnier's board game Esagil: Treasure Hunt in Babylon presented to the public at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology for a full week, by a team of student and staff volunteers.

- A staff member and three Undergraduate students hold a presentation on Assyriology at Ormiston Academy, Sudbury.

- A Postgraduate student runs a stall on Mesopotamian Medicine at the Archaeology and Prehistory Day, as part of the Festival of Ideas.

All year: course Babylonic Cuneiform run by Nicholas Postgate at the University of the Third Age.

2015-2016

September – Guo Honggeng (Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing) in Cambridge as Visiting Scholar at the McDonald Institute.

- Two Undergraduates' readings of the Incantation for Tooth Worm added to the website of recordings in Babylonian and Assyrian hosted by SOAS, University of London.

- Staff members collaborate in Artist Sally Stenton's Festival of Ideas Project Stone Paper Cloud.

July - a staff member convenes the three-night residential St John's College Archaeology Summer School, attended by 43 sixth formers. Feedback forms vote Akkadian language the most popular component after excavation and punting!

- the University's Public Engagement Seed Fund agrees to fund the production of Marie Besnier's board game Esagil: Treasure Hunt in Babylon.

June - Mesopotamian staff and student visit to the British Museum, including a private viewing of the Tablet Room with Jon Taylor, and a gallery tour by Irving Finkel.

- a staff member gives a presentation on Babylonian Literature at the St John's College Languages Study Day.

May – first edition of the Egypt/Mesopotamia Conference for Sixth Formers, co-organised by the Mesopotamian and Egyptian sections of the Department of Archaeology.

April - a staff member takes part in the St John's College North West Access Tour, giving presentations on Ancient Mesopotamia.

March - an Undergraduate student gave a talk on Assyriology to sixth formers at Parmiter's School in Watford.

February – Augusta McMahon featured in the BBC programme Museum of Lost Objects.

January-March – Gösta Gabriel (University of Göttingen), in Cambridge as a visiting scholar at the McDonald Institute, convenes an extracurricular Sumerian reading group.

Easter Term 2019

Apr 30, 2019 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — The McDonald Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, Nancy Highcock (University of Cambridge) - Religious Aspects of Mercantile Identities in 3rd and 2nd Millennia Mesopotamia and Anatolia

May 14, 2019 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — West Building Seminar Room, West Building, Downing Site, Downing Street, Christina Tsouparopoulou (University of Cambridge) - Connectivities of Societies in Western Eurasia: Common Mitanni Cylinder Seals from Greece 

Lent Term 2019

Jan 22, 2019 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, Silvia Ferreri (University of Cambridge) - Tombs, ancestors and women: The case of Umm El Marra (Syria)

Feb 05, 2019 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, Kevin Kay (University of Cambridge) - Who does a house hold? Social structure, house biography and the question of history at Neolithic Çatalhöyük

Feb 19, 2019 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, Nèle Ziegler (CNRS Paris) - A sick boy in Aleppo

Mar 05, 2019 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, Selena Wisnom (University of Cambridge) - The uses of Mesopotamian literature

Michaelmas Term 2018

Oct 23, 2018 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Nicla De Zorzi (Vienna) - How to identify serial adultery through animal behaviour: on analogistic thought in Ancient Mesopotamia

Oct 30, 2018 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — South Lecture Room, Department of Archaeology, North Building, Downing Street, Elizabeth Bennett (London) - What’s in a name for a Babylonian scholar?

Nov 13, 2018 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM —McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Walter Sommerfeld (Marburg) - The myth of the cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians

Nov 29, 2018 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — South Lecture Room, Department of Archaeology, North Building, Downing Street, Christoph Schmidhuber (Cambridge/Heidelberg) - From childhood to 'childhood': on children in Old Babylonian society

Easter 2018

May 01, 2018 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, — Sebastiano Soldi, (Archaeological Museum of Florence) - Glazing in the West: architectural elements and glazed ceramics in the Iron Age northern Levant

Lent 2018

Feb 06, 2018 from 06:30 PM to 07:30 PM — McDonald Institute, Downing Street, — Yağmur Heffron, (UCL) - The kārum period in Amatolia: Towards a historiography of archaeological interpretation - II

Feb 13, 2018 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — South Lecture Room, Department of Archaeology, Downing Stree, — Eva Miller, (University of Birmingham) - Parallels and references in Ashurbanipal's Teumann-Dunanu sequences

Michaelmas 2017

Oct 24, 2017 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, Vitali Bartash, (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität) - Children and the Early State: A Complex Socioeconomic Interplay in Mesopotamia

Oct 25, 2017 from 02:00 PM to 04:00 PM — South Lecture Room, Division of Archaeology, Downing Site, — Reading Group led by Vitali Bartash (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität) - Sumerian crime stories

Nov 07, 2017 from 05:30 PM to 07:00 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, Stef Conner, (University of Huddersfield) - "No, this is the Oldest Song in the World!" Have rival attempts to decipher Mesopotamian music notation reached a permanent stalemate?

Nov 21, 2017 from 05:30 PM to 07:00 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, — Bleda During, (Universiteit Leiden) - Chalcolithic Cyprus: An Island in Splendid Isolation?

Nov 28, 2017 from 05:30 PM to 07:00 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, — John Ray, (University of Cambridge) - Assyriology through Egyptological Spectacles

Easter 2017

May 02, 2017 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, — Tim Clayden, (University of Oxford) - The Late Babylonian to Early Kassite Period: Issues

Jun 02, 2017 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — South Lecture Room, Division of Archaeology, Downing Site, — Tzvi Abusch, (Brandeis University) - Some synchronic and diachronic observations on a Babylonian prayer type

Lent 2017

Jan 24, 2017 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, — Mark Weeden, (SOAS, University of London) - Provincial Identities: The use of Anatolian Hieroglyphic writing at Kaman-Kalehöyük

Feb 07, 2017 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, — John MacGinnis, (The British Museum) - The ancient history of Erbil

Feb 21, 2017 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, — Sara Pizzimenti, (La Sapienza University, Rome) - Stars and Heaven Perception in the Near East: Astral Representations in the II Millennium BC Cylinder Seals and Monumental Art

Feb 22, 2017 from 04:00 PM to 05:00 PM — West Building Seminar Room, Division Room, Downing Street, — Sabina Franke, (Universität Hamburg) - Sargon's 8th campaign to Urartu and the Temple in Muṣaṣir

Mar 16, 2017 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, — Jacob Dahl, (University of Oxford) - The Odd and the Ordinary: Making canon out of Nothing or the peculiar history of a few Mesopotamian objects and a few odd comments about Sumerian literature

Michaelmas 2016

Oct 18, 2016 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, — Magnus Widell, (University of Liverpool) - New light on Ur III

Oct 26, 2016 from 03:30 PM to 05:30 PM — West Building Seminar Room, Division Room, Downing Street, — Enrique Jiménez, (Yale University) - 'Palm and Vine' - A new Babylonian disputation poem

Nov 01, 2016 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, — Stuart Campbell, (The University of Manchester) - Rural and urban centres on the edges of the marshlands of southern Iraq: Tell Khaiber and Charax Spasinou

Nov 21, 2016 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — South Lecture Room, Division of Archaeology, Downing Site, — Strahil Panayotov, (Free University of Berlin) - Mesopotamian eye disease texts

Nov 29, 2016 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Courtyard Building, Downing Street, — Christoph Dalley, (University of Oxford) - Fifty years a spouse: A sideways look at Assyriology

Easter term 2016

Apr 26, 2016 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Marie-Françoise Besnier (McDonald Institute, Cambridge) - How to understand the unseen: images for the primary stages of life in Tablet 1 of šumma izbu

May 10, 2016 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, Daniela Arroyo-Barrantes (University of Cambridge) - Tell Majnuna: the origins of urban production in Mesopotamia 

Lent Term 2016

Jan 19, 2016 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM; South Lecture Room, Division of Archaeology; Patrick Michel (University of Geneva): Relations between the Sumero-Akkadian elite and Seleucid power in Babylon and Uruk.

Feb 02, 2016 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM; McDonald Institute Seminar Room; Gösta Gabriel (Graduate School for Humanities, Göttingen): Interchanging stories - the mutual dependency of the Sumerian King List and the Sumerian Flood Story.

Feb 16, 2016 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM; McDonald Institute Seminar Room; Mark Altaweel (University College London): The dawn of empires in the Ancient Near East: a dynamic systems approach.

Mar 01, 2016 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM; McDonald Institute Seminar Room; Johannes Haubold (University of Durham): After Babylon: Mesopotamian and pseudo-Mesopotamian literature in the Roman empire.

Michaelmas Term 2015 

Oct 13, 2015 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM; South Lecture Room, Division of Archaeology; Christopher Metcalf (University of Oxford):Old Babylonian religious poetry in Anatolia: from solar hymn to plague prayer.

Oct 27, 2015 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM; South Lecture Room, Division of Archaeology; Selena Wisnom (University of Oxford): Old English stress patterns in Akkadian poetry: a comparative approach.

Nov 05, 2015 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM; South Lecture Room, Division of Archaeology; François Desset (University of Tehran / UMR 7041 ArScAn): Linear Elamite and geometric (Jiroft) writings : the state of the art about some undeciphered Iranian writing systems of the 3rd millennium BC.

Nov 17, 2015 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM; McDonald Institute Seminar Room; Olga Vinnichenko (University of Cambridge): The Aramaization of the Assyrian empire as evidenced by language.

Dec 01, 2015 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM; McDonald Institute Seminar Room; Frank Simons (University of Birmingham): While we’ve got the brazier out, we may as well do Šurpu ...

Easter Term 2015

April 28th from 5.30-6.30 PM, McDonald Institute Seminar Room 
Dr N. İlgi Gerçek, Affiliated Lecturer in Akkadian, Istanbul University 
The Steepest Places: Rebellion and Political Dissent in Hittite Records

Lent Term 2015

January 27th from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, 
Dr Christoph Bachhuber, POINT Fellow, Freie Universität Berlin 
The Presence of a Hittite Past 

February 3rd from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, 
Prof. Haskel Greenfield, Professor of Anthropology, University of Manitoba & Visiting Fellow, McDonald Institute 
Early Urban Neighbourhoods in the Southern Levant: The Early Bronze III at Tell es-Safi/Gath, Israel 

February 10th from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, 
Dr Wendy Matthews, Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Reading 
New Insights into Early Sedentism and Resource Management: The Central Zagros Archaeological Project 

February 17th from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, 
Dr Kathryn Stevens, Lecturer in Classics, University of Durham & Junior Research Fellow, Trinity College Cambridge 
Preserving the Past or Predicting the Future? Late Babylonian Scholars and Enūma Anu Enlil 

February 24th from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, 
Dr Gül Pulhan, Director of Gre Amer Excavations, Turkey 
North of the Tur Abdin but Still in the Loop: Excavations at Gre Amer, Garzan 

March 3rd from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, 
Dr Ulf-Dietrich Schoop, Lecturer in Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Edinburgh 
The Role of Technology in Chalcholithic Anatolia

Michaelmas Term 2014

Oct 14, 2014 from 06:00 PM to 07:00 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, 
Dr Birger Ekornåsvåg Helgestad (The British Museum) 
The Ur Project: Digitally Reunifying the Finds and Archives from the City of Ur 

Oct 28, 2014 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, 
Prof. emer. Michael Roaf (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) 
30-day Months and 10-day Weeks 

Nov 04, 2014 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, 
Dr Sophie V. Moore (Newcastle University) 
Bodies of Evidence at First and Second Millennium AD Çatalhöyük: Identity, Memory and Knowledge 

Nov 11, 2014 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, 
Prof Cécile Michel (CNRS Nanterre) 
The Economic Activities of the Aššur Women According to Kaneš Private Archives (19th century BCE) 

Nov 18, 2014 from 05:30 PM to 06:30 PM — McDonald Institute Seminar Room, 
Dr Mark Jackson (Newcastle University) 
Innovation in the Byzantine Dark Age

Lent Term 2014

14 January, 2014
Dr. Michael Danti, Boston University
Searching for Musasir: The Rowanduz Archaeological Program 2013 in Iraqi Kurdistan

21 January, 2014
Prof. Douglas Baird, Liverpool University
A tale of two villages: The spread of farming in Neolithic Central Anatolia and the antecedents of Çatalhöyük: Excavations at Pinarbasi and Boncuklu

4 February, 2014
Prof. Andrew George, SOAS
On house drains and street lamps: textual evidence for some Babylonian civic amenities

11 February, 2014
Prof. Grant Frame, University of Pennsylvania
Lost in the Tigris: Trials and Tribulations in Editing the Royal Inscriptions of Sargon II of Assyria

25 February, 2014
Prof. Amélie Kuhrt, UCL
A Persian View of the Achaemenid Empire

11 March, 2014
Prof. Karen Radner, UCL
Brain drain: Foreign experts in the Assyrian heartland

Michaelmas Term 2013

15th October 2013
Dr. David Kertai, Institute of Archaeology, University College, London
Kalḫu’s royal palaces of the Late Assyrian period 

21st October 2013 (*Monday*)
Dr. Seth Richardson, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago
Sennacherib at Jerusalem: The First World Event

29th October 2013
Dr. Barbara Böck, Institute for Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean and Near East, CSIC, Madrid
On Religious Thought in Ancient Babylonian Medicine: Medicinal Plants and Diseases Associated with the Healing Goddess Gula

12th November 2013
Dr. Martin Worthington, Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge
Miscellanies in Neo-Assyrian grammar

26th November 2013
Prof. Johannes Haubold, Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Durham
Seleucid euergetism: Greek and Babylonian perspectives 

Lent Term 2013

Prof. Eliezer Oren (Ben Gurion University): Canaanite Temples, Rites and Rituals: Archaeological Evidence from Tel Haror, Israel

Prof. Nicholas Postgate (Cambridge): Three Gentlemen of Assyria: Inside Middle Assyrian Government Circles

Dr Paul Collins (Ashmolean Museum): Contract and Narrative in the Art of Mesopotamia 

2012

Jennie Bradbury (Durham University): Living and Dying in the the 4th-3rd millennium BC Levant

Nicholas Reid (Oxford University): TBC

Heather Baker (University of Vienna): At Home in the Babylonian City: new light on domestic housing and urban living conditions

Alan Greaves (Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Liverpool): John Garstang's Work in Turkey - and the New Exhibition at the University of Liverpool (31st January)

Graham Philip (Professor of Archaeology, Durham University): Exploiting the Landscape of the Levant: a long-term perspective (7th February)

Caroline Waerzeggers (Lecturer in the Ancient Near East, UCL): Babylonia in the 1st Millennium (14th February)

Karen Sonik (Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles): Frontality and the Gaze in Mesopotamian Art (21st February)

Greta Van Buylaere (Research Fellow, Assyrian-Babylonian Scholarly Literacies, University of Cambridge): Assyrian and Babylonian Scholarly Literacies (6th March)

Assaad Seif (Co-ordinator of Archaeological Research, Ministry of Culture, Lebanon): Paradigm Shifts and the Politics of the Past in Lebanon: Urban Archaeology in the Making (13th March)

Ruth Horry (HPS, University of Cambridge): Doctors, divination and museum displays: the multiple lives of a Babylonian clay liver model (1st May)

DT Potts (Edwin Cuthbert Hall Professor of Middle Eastern Archaeology, University of Sydney): From sedentism to nomadism: Transformations in Iranian history and prehistory (8th May)

Mark Altaweel (Lecturer in Near Eastern Archaeology, UCL): New Investigations in the Iraqi Hilly Flanks: Social-Environmental and Historical Investigations from 2009-2012 (15th May)

Professor Elizabeth Stone and Professor Paul Zimansky (State University of New York, Stony Brook): Tell Sakhariya and the Urban Matrix of Mesopotamia (12th June) 

2011

Tony Wilkinson (Professor of Archaeology, University of Durham): Upper Mesopotamian Trajectories: Settlement and Community within a Fragile Environment (25th January)

David Wengrow (Reader in Comparative Archaeology, UCL): Why did cross-cultural trade matter in the ancient Near East? (1st February)

Alasdair Livingstone (Reader in Assyriology, University of Birmingham): Hemerologies (15th February)

Ronan Head (Research Fellow in Ancient Law, Brigham Young University): The Babylonian Merchant-Slave (22nd February)

Frances Reynolds (Shillito Fellow in Assyriology, University of Oxford): Chaos in Akkadian Myth and Ritual (1st March)

Yoram Cohen (Dept of Archaeology and Near Eastern Cultures, Tel Aviv University): The Emar Scribal School (10th May)

Jon Taylor (Assistant Keeper of the Cuneiform Collections, British Museum): Squeezed, broken and lovingly preserved: Neo-Babylonian copies of ancient inscriptions (24th May)

Ilya Yakubovich (Fellow in Indo-Iranian Philology at the University of Oxford): Reconstructing multilingualism in ancient societies (11th October)

Christopher Metcalf (University of Oxford): New parallels in Hittite and Sumerian praise of the Sun (18th October)

Johanna Tudeau (University of Cambridge): Architectural planning in Assyria according to the royal inscriptions, state archives and omen series (1st November)

Marie-Françoise Besnier (Research Fellow, The Geography of Knowledge in Assyria and Babylonia, University of Cambridge): The Transmission of Divinatory series and their "Standardization" throughout second and first Millennia: the Examples of šumma izbu and ālu Series (22nd November)

David Wengrow (Reader in Comparative Archaeology, UCL): Images between worlds: Egypt and Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium BC (29th November)

2010

Andrew George (Professor of Babylonian, SOAS, University of London): Translating Gilgamesh (1st February)

Yağmur Sarıoğlu (Doctoral Candidate, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge): Texts Meet Archaeology: Ritual Vessels in Anatolian Domestic Cults in the 2nd Millennium B.C. (8th February)

John MacGinnis (Research Fellow, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge): Sun readers are not all the same: investigating the archives of the Neo-Babylonian Shamash Temple in Sippar (22nd February)

Luis Siddall (Doctoral Candidate SOAS, University of London): A New(ish) stele of the Assyrian king, Adad-nirari III and what it can tell us about text genre and chronology (1st March)

Jacob Lauinger (Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Research Fellow, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge): Following the Man of Yamhad: Alalakh and Syria in the Late Old Babylonian Period (26th April)

Stephanie Dalley (Senior Research Fellow in Assyriology, Faculty of Oriental Studies, Oxford University): Kish according to Cuneiform Sources: Overview of an Overview (10th May)

Roger Matthews (Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology, UCL): The Central Zagros Archaeological Project: new research into Neolithic society of west Iran (24th May)

Francesca Rochberg (Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley): Cultural Matrix for Babylonian Astral Science in the Hellenistic World (31st May)

Nicole Brisch (University Lecturer in Assyriology, University of Cambridge): Letters to the Gods: Royal Letters of Petition as a Genre of Sumerian Scholarly Literature (26th October)

Jacob Dahl (University Lecturer in Assyriology, University of Oxford): Early Writing in the Ancient Near East (2nd November)

Johannes Haubold (Senior Lecturer in the Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Durham): The Barbarian Writes Back: Reading Berossos (16th November)

Mark Weeden (British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow, SOAS): Tabal and the Limits of Assyrian Imperialism (23rd November)