Project Directors


Amber Jacob (Co-Director)

Amber Jacob is a PhD candidate at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University. Her main research interests lie in the history of science and medicine and the cross-cultural encounters between ancient Egyptian and Greek intellectual traditions in the Graeco-Roman Period (c. 300 BCE–300 CE). Her dissertation presents the editio princeps of an extensive but fragmentary corpus of 1st–2nd century CE Demotic medical texts from Tebtunis.


Sofie Schiødt (Co-Director)

Sofie Schiødt is a postdoctoral researcher at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Schiødt’s main research interests lie in ancient Egyptian medicine and magic, science and technology, and social history. She is currently working on a text edition of the medical Papyrus Louvre-Carlsberg, the second longest medical text surviving from ancient Egypt.


Ida Adsbøl Christensen (Asst. Director)

Ida Adsbøl Christensen is a PhD candidate at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University. Her primary research interests are centered on ancient Egyptian scientific literature, scribal culture, and social history of Roman Egypt. Christensen’s doctoral project includes the edition and contextualization of four unpublished astrological manuscripts written in Demotic from the Tebtunis temple library.



Members of Collaboration


Troels Pank Arbøll

Troels Pank Arbøll is assistant professor of Assyriology at the University of Copenhagen. He is engaged in research on Mesopotamian medicine, magic, epidemics, and the transmission of knowledge in the ancient world. By combining traditional philology with interdisciplinary approaches his research aims to increase our understanding of early disease conceptualization, therapeutic practices, and knowledge production.


Claire Bubb

Claire Bubb is assistant professor of Classical Literature and Science at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University. Her research interests lie in medicine and the biological sciences in the Greco-Roman world, particularly the works of Galen and Aristotle.


Marina Escolano-Poveda

Marina Escolano-Poveda is a senior lecturer (associate professor) in Classics/Ancient History and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool. Her research centers on the literature, religion, society, and science of Graeco-Roman Egypt, particularly astronomical, astrological, and alchemical sources.


Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert

Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert is professor emeritus of Egyptology at Universität Leipzig and project director at the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig. He has published widely on ancient Egyptian literature, medicine, and magic, typically applying a socio-historical perspective to the study of the ancient source material.


Anne Grons

Anne Grons is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of the History of Pharmacy and Medicine at Philipps-Universität Marburg. Her work centers on Coptic pharmacology, the culture of late antique and early Islamic Egypt, and the lexicography of Greek and Arabic loanwords in Coptic.


Fredrik Hagen

Fredrik Hagen is professor of Egyptology at the University of Copenhagen. His research revolves around ancient Egyptian literature, the culture of writing, and the socio-economic history of Egypt in the 2nd millennium BCE.


Ann Ellis Hanson

Ann Ellis Hanson is professor emerita of Classics at Yale University. Her research centers on papyrology and the study of ancient medicine, particularly as represented in the Greek medical papyri from Egypt. Her work showcases the contribution that non-canonical sources can bring to our understanding of ancient medicine.


Friedhelm Hoffmann

Friedhelm Hoffmann is professor of Egyptology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. His research focuses, broadly speaking, on Egyptian literature, religion, magic, and science.


Richard Jasnow

Richard Jasnow is professor of Egyptology at Johns Hopkins University. He is a specialist in the Egyptian Late Period and has edited a wide range of literary, legal, and economic manuscripts.


Alexander Jones

Alexander Jones is professor of the History of the Exact Sciences in Antiquity at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University. His work centers on mathematical sciences, especially astronomy and astrology, in the ancient Near East and the Greek world.


Tanja Pommerening

Tanja Pommerening is professor of the History of Pharmacy and Medicine at Philipps-Universität Marburg. Her research centers on the history of science, especially pharmacy and medicine, in ancient Egypt and beyond.


Luigi Prada

Luigi Prada is associate professor of Egyptology at Uppsala University. His main research interests lie in the cultural, religious, and social history of ancient Egypt, particularly during the first millennium BCE and the early centuries CE.


Joachim Quack

Joachim Quack is professor of Egyptology at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. He has published prolifically in the field of Egyptology and beyond, with a particular focus on literary, religious, magical, and scientific texts as well as intercultural interactions.


Tonio Sebastian Richter

Tonio Sebastian Richter is professor of Egyptology at the Freie Universität Berlin and project directer at the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He is a Coptologist whose work centers on the history and culture of Roman, Byzantine, and Early Islamic Egypt, particularly legal, magical, medical, and alchemical texts.


Kim Ryholt

Kim Ryholt is professor of Egyptology at the University of Copenhagen, the director of the Papyrus Carlsberg Collection, and founder of the SciPap project. He specializes in ancient Egyptian history, literature, and historiography with particular focus on Demotic texts from the Papyrus Carlsberg Collection.


Juliane Unger

Juliane Unger is a PhD student at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. Her doctoral project aims to prepare the first edition of papyrus Brooklyn 47.218.75+.86 of the 26th dynasty, which mainly features remedies against afflictions of the back and abdomen as well as gynecological treatments. Unger’s research interests comprise ancient Egyptian sciences as well as concepts of the natural and supernatural world.


Lingxin Zhang

Lingxin Zhang is assistant professor at Georgetown University. Her research interests cover scientific, divinatory, and medical practices in Greco-Roman Egypt, and particularly the study of such practices through the lens of critical gender theories and post-colonialist studies.


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