About us:

The Institute of Near Eastern Archaeology has been a leading research and teaching institution in the field of the archaeology of Western Asia for over 50 years, and maintains a strong focus on interdisciplinarity in the study of West Asian cultural history.
In 2025, the project KIŠIB. Digital Corpus of Ancient West Asian Seals and Sealings / Digitales Korpus vorderasiatischer Siegel und Siegelabrollungen of the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften BAdW (Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities) will be launched at the Institute under the direction of Prof. Dr. Adelheid Otto.
The project will be jointly realised with the Berlin-Brandenburg Akademy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) under the direction of Prof. Dr. Elisa Roßberger (Freie Universität Berlin).
The objective of KIŠIB’s interdisciplinary team of archaeologists, assyriologists, and IT specialists is to establish a representative digital corpus of ca. 80,000 West Asian seals and seal impressions (4000-100 BCE) and to generate a well-structured annotated dataset of the seals’ pictorial and textual components. Its research component will explore ancient mechanisms of interpersonal and societal trust established through sealing practice and seal design.

We are looking for you:

Doctoral Researcher (m/f/x)

in Munich

Your tasks and responsibilities:

• Research within the Bavarian Academy project KIŠIB.
• Realisation of a doctoral project on seals and seal impressions from the Near East (4th-1st mill. BCE).
• Research topics on social history, art history, or cultural history are equally welcome.
• The Ph.D. topic should align with the guiding research question of KIŠIB, which is the role seals or sealings played in building trust on an interpersonal and a societal level.
• Collecting, indexing and annotating relevant seal corpora in the KIŠIB-data base.
• Organisation of a workshop in the second year of your doctoral project and co-working on its publication.
• Contribution to the project’s visibility through public outreach activities.

Your qualifications:

• You hold an excellent degree (MA or equivalent) in Archaeology or a related field, with a clear focus on the cultures of ancient West Asia.
• You are highly interested in visual cultural studies and the application of cutting-edge digital methods.
• You are highly committed and prepared to closely co-operate in an international and interdisciplinary team.
• Experience in the handling of seals or sealings is desirable.
• The working languages of the project are German and English.
• We expect doctoral candidates whose mother tongue is not German to acquire functional German knowledge within the first two years.

Benefits:

We offer you an exciting and responsible range of tasks in an inspiring academic environment. You will be working in an interdisciplinary team at an excellent research institution. The position is to be filled for 65 % of regular working hours in an employment relationship initially limited to two years. An option exists to extend the contract for an additional two years. If the personal and pay scale requirements are met, remuneration will be in accordance with pay grade 13 TV-L.

Your place of work will be in Munich, centrally located in the heart of the town.

Our university promotes the compatibility of family and professional life. We especially welcome applications from women and LGBTQI+ persons.

People with disabilities who are equally as qualified as other applicants will receive preferential treatment.

Contact:

Please send your application (covering letter, exposé of your doctoral project, CV, certificates, and a writing sample of at least three pages) in German or English language in one pdf-file (max. 5 MB) to: aotto@lmu.de

The application deadline is the 20th January 2025.

Should you have any queries, please contact Dr. Albert Dietz, albert.dietz@lmu.de or Prof. Dr. Adelheid Otto, aotto@lmu.de

Institut für Vorderasiatische Archäologie der LMU München
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
80539 München

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