New job, new city
Today I actually have some big news. I have started a new job and in a new city (sort of)! I am a project coordinator in a newly started project on Mesopotamian seals. Actually, I am not the only project coordinator, as this is a joint project between the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, where I will be working for quite a while.
KIŠIB
So the project I am working for is called KIŠIB, which is the Sumerian word for seal. The full title is actually “KIŠIB – Digital Corpus of Ancient West Asian Seals and Sealings”, which pretty much tells you what it is about: We are going to try to create a digital database of West Asian seals that does not exist in this form. There have been some smaller projects that we are building on, but this one will be huge and will last for the next 16 years.
The project in Berlin is led by Prof Elisa Roßberger, and I am responsible for coordinating it. The cool thing is that we want to do more than just present a simple database, we want to do much more with the data. This is where I come in with my background in digital archaeology. I will be responsible for overseeing work on the database, websites and analysis tools. We are talking about LOD, ML, FAIR, CARE and much more.
New city?
Well, sort of. The job is in Berlin, and since I have to move here, it is a new city. Especially after living somewhere else for eight years. But on the other hand, I was born here and lived in Berlin for over 30 years. So it really is coming home. In short, I am looking forward to it. The other part of the project is in Munich, where Prof. Adelheid Otto is leading the project and Albert Dietz is coordinating it. We also have colleagues in Berlin who are doing the programming part and in Munich who are doing the philological part. So there will always be six team members plus PhD, MA or BA students.
So please expect more on Mesopotamian seals in the future here and elsewhere. As soon as we have a working project website, I will let you know. Until then, you can have a look at the short description of the BBAW or the BAdW.
