Current research

As an Assyriologist working with the history of medicine, I primarily publish and study cuneiform texts with medical diagnoses, prescriptions, descriptions of plants, and healing rituals to gain a deeper understanding of ancient medical knowledge and practices. In my monograph Medicine in Ancient Assur from 2021 (available with open access) I provided the first study of the career of a single healer from the 7th century BCE by outlining his training and practice. My second monograph, published by the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, contains text editions of early first millennium BCE Akkadian and Sumerian scholarly, political, and administrative cuneiform texts from the Syrian city Hama. The texts are among the only surviving scholarly cuneiform manuscripts from the Levant in this period. Furthermore, I have produced a range of articles examining ancient conceptions of disease, anatomy and physiology, the reality behind medical ingredients, epidemics, zoonotic diseases, the transmission of knowledge, as well as the iconography of demons and animals, and I have published a cuneiform tablet with the first known illustration of a demon of epilepsy. I also participate in interdiscplinary studies, and I have also been first author on a study of ancient DNA found in a clay brick from ancient Mesopotamia, aimed at mapping ancient biodiversity and published in Scientific Reports, as well as a perspective investigating the earliest known sources related to sexual-romantic kissing in relation to disease transmission, published in Science. My research combines traditional and new approaches to the study of ancient Mesopotamian medicine and history in order to increase the temporal depth of humanity’s scientific history while broadening our understanding of early healing practices and knowledge production. 

I am the PI of the research project From Catastrophe to Culture: Understanding Epidemics in Ancient Mesopotamia, generously funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF). The project will provide the first holistic study of epidemics in ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and Syria), drawing on cuneiform texts and archaeological evidence from the 3rd to the 1st millennium BCE. It investigates how epidemics emerged, spread, and impacted ancient societies over the course of approximately 2000 years of written history. Through an interdisciplinary approach combining philological analysis, archaeological data, meta-analysis of ancient DNA studies, and epidemiological modelling, the project will examine six case studies to map the frequency, transmission, and societal responses to epidemic events. In collaboration with the PandemiX Center of Excellence, the findings will contribute new historical depth to our understanding of humanity’s early experiences with epidemic disease and reshape the timeline of ancient epidemics.

From September 2024, I am a member of the Young Academy under the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters.

From November 2023 until May 2024, I was a member of the Academy of Science Communication under the Royal Danish cademy of Sciences and Letters.

My article with co-author Sophie Lund Rasmussen on the earliest attested kiss, published in Science in 2023, was nominated by the Danish news magazine The Engineer (Ingeniøren) as one of the five most important Danish research results of 2023.

CV

Academic Employment

02/2025 – Present   University of Copenhagen, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, Associate Professor in Assyriology

01/2023– 01/2025   University of Copenhagen, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, Assistant Professor in Assyriology (externally funded position granted by the Edubba Foundation)

01/2021 – 12/2022   University of Oxford, Linacre College & Faculty of Oriental Studies, Carlsberg Junior Research Fellow, Nerve and Muscle Illnesses and their Healing in Cuneiform Texts from Ancient Mesopotamia (my postdoc project externally funded by the Carlsberg Foundation)

04/2019 – 12/2020   University of Copenhagen, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, Postdoctoral researcher, the projects Scholarly Cuneiform Tablets from the Syrian City Hama (my postdoc project externally funded by the Edubba Foundation) and Hidden Treasures (PI Nicole Brisch)

09/2018 – 03/2019   University of Copenhagen, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, Part-time Lecturer [Danish: Ekstern Lektor]

09/2014 – 08/2017   University of Copenhagen, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, PhD Fellow (funded by the Faculty of Humanities)

02/2014 – 06/2014   University of Copenhagen, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, Part-time Lecturer [Danish: Ekstern Lektor]

04/2013 – 01/2014   University of Copenhagen, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, Academic Assistant, The Old Assyrian Text Project and Center for Canon and Identity Formation