Bennett, Eleanor (Ellie), Rose
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6325-5911
University of Helsinki Researcher Portal: https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/eleanor-rose-bennett/
Current position and date of appointment
Jan. 2026-Oct. 2026: Postdoctoral Researcher in Embodied Emotions: Ancient Mesopotamia and Today (Finnish Cultural Foundation, PI Prof. Saana Svärd). Career stage II, FT. I am part of an interdisciplinary working group funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. The goal of the project is to compare how the Akkadian, English, and Finnish languages embodied emotions. My role is to download, clean, and process data relating to the Akkadian and English text corpora in the project. I also have been tasked with performing Assyriological and linguistic comparative analyses of the results.
Education and degrees awarded
2021: PhD History and Cultures ‘“Queens of the Arabs” During the Neo-Assyrian Period’. Supervisors: Saana Svärd, Jason Silverman. University of Helsinki. Opponent: Lorenzo Verderame. Available open access. University of Helsinki, Finland (University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 3 (Fabianinkatu 33), 00014, Finland; +358 (0) 2941 911).
2015: M.Res Cuneiform and Ancient Near East Studies ‘Trade or Gender – Which Was More Influential in Relations between the Royalty of the Neo-Assyrians and the “Queens of the Arabs”?’. Supervisor: Alasdair Livingstone. University of Birmingham, UK. Available open access.
2013: BA Ancient History Awarded 2.1 grade. Dissertation title: ‘Homosexuality in Athens and Sparta’. University of Birmingham, UK.
Previous professional appointments
Sept. 2023 – Dec. 2025: Postdoctoral Researcher in Centre of Excellence in Ancient Near Eastern Empires (ANEE), University of Helsinki. Career stage II, (20% PT until September 2025, when it was raised to FT). I was part of Team 1 in ANEE and used digital methods to investigate Neo-Assyrian historical identities. Responsibilities included editing a volume on network science in ancient Near Eastern research, as well as collaborating with other colleagues within ANEE for smaller projects relating to imperial identities and network science approaches.
Sept. 2022 – Aug. 2025: Postdoctoral Researcher in Embodied Emotions: Ancient Mesopotamia and Today (Finnish Cultural Foundation, PI Prof. Saana Svärd). Career stage II, FT. This was the beginning of the position I am currently working under. See entry for ‘Current Employment’ for further details of the duties this position included.
2019-2022: Postdoctoral Researcher in ANEE, University of Helsinki. Career stage I and II, FT. I was hired to carry out a project using digital methods to explore Neo-Assyrian masculinities. My role also included collaborative projects with other members of ANEE on the subject of changing imperial identities in the ancient Near East. During this time I also helped organise a Gender and Methodology in the Ancient Near East (GeMANE) workshop. Concurrently I also completed my PhD in 2021 after transferring from the UK.
Sept. 2017-June 2018: Tutor at the Academic Writing and Advisory Service (AWAS) at the University of Birmingham. Career stage I, PT. My role was to provide feedback to undergraduate students on their formal essay writing style. This included a drop-in clinic, booked appointments, and seminars for larger courses on specific writing styles and tasks (e.g. writing literature reviews).
Career breaks
May 2024-April 2025 (10 months): parental leave.
Research awards, research honours and major stipendiary support for research
August 2025: ANEE Team 1 Publication Prize. Joint winner for Bennett, E., Tambs, L., & Lindén, K. 2024. ’Letters have weight: weighted k-shells in a Neo-Assyrian co-attestation network’, Journal of Historical Network Research, 10/1. 150-197.
August 2022: ANEE Team 1 Publication Prize. Winner for Bennett, E., 2021. “Queens of the Arabs” During the Neo-Assyrian Period. PhD Thesis, University of Helsinki.
Editorial board memberships/editor
2022-present: I have been an editor in two edited volumes (following the style of the List of Publications, I have made my name bold in the editorial listing):
- Bennett, E., Cifarelli, M., N’Shea, O., & Thomason, A. (eds.) In press. Exploring Gender Dynamics across the Ancient Near East. wEdge 7. Münster: Zaphon. One of four editors for an edited volume of scholarship presented at the Gender and Methodology in the Ancient Near East (GeMANE) 4 and 5. Work was divided equally amongst editors.
- Tambs, L., Bennett, E., & Valk, J. (eds.) Submitted. Networks in the Ancient Near East. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. One of three editors for an edited volume on using network science to explore ancient Near Eastern research questions. Tambs took the lead in the project, and my role was to be lead editor of one of the three sections of the volume focusing on networks in corpus linguistics.
Rosetta Journal General Editor (2016-2017). General Editor for two volumes of the student-run, international, peer-reviewed journal Rosetta. I oversaw the scientific rigour and overall direction of the journal. Part of the position included writing three editorials.
Elected memberships in scientific societies
Board Member of GeMANE Community Board (2024-2028). The GeMANE Board oversees the wider activities of GeMANE as a community. It ensures the workshops uphold the spirit of the original event, and helps the proceedings volumes maintain scientific rigour. It is currently working on a website, newsletter, and other programmes scheduled to run on the years when the GeMANE workshops are not running. My specific role is overseeing the GeMANE newsletter, and developing a mentorship programme for PhD students and Early Career Researchers.
Supervision of research work and postgraduate studies
March 2026: External Supervisor, University of Pennsylvania (student expected to submit in 2029). My role is to provide feedback to drafts and guide the student based on my expertise in digital approaches and applications of gender theory to ancient Near Eastern material.
Other academic and professional activities
Teaching Activities:
Nisaba Mentorship Programme (pilot programme to be launched in 2026). I am currently developing a mentorship programme for the early career researchers interested in ancient Near Eastern gender. It will pair PhD students or ECRs with a mentor in the discipline, and over the course two years the mentees will have submitted their first article.
January 2025: SKY Meet Supervisor, Session 1 of 2025, University of Helsinki. Acted as a supervisor in the feedback sessions of the doctoral programme of Gender Studies at the University of Helsinki.
August 2023: Organised Digital Applications in Assyriology Nordic Summer School (DAA) 2023, University of Helsinki, alongside Lena Tambs and Saana Svärd. My role was to help with practicalities and logistics of the summer school, and I helped develop the course taught based on feedback from the previous year’s students.
August 2022 and 2023: Taught ‘Introduction to Python’, DAA, University of Uppsala (2022) and University of Helsinki (2023). My role was to introduce the coding language Python to students of varying digital competencies, and demonstrate the potential for Pythong in interrogating Akkadian textual material.
2021: University Pedagogics 2.1 ‘General Skills and Course Alignment’. Graded 5/5. University of Helsinki, Finland. Course designed to teach how to incorporate general skills into a course, and how to align the assessments, grading, and teaching activities of the course with the goals I have for the students.
2021: Akkadian 3 (Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions), Period I-II, University of Helsinki. Course in the dead language Akkadian. The goal of the course was for students to produce a critical commentary on a piece of Akkadian they had studied during the course.
2021: University Pedagogics 1 ‘Introduction to University Pedagogics’. Graded 4/5. University of Helsinki, Finland. Introductory course to university-level pedagogics. Introduced different styles of teaching and why they were important for students’ learning.
Sept. 2017-June 2018: Tutor at AWAS, University of Birmingham. My role was to provide feedback to undergraduate students on their formal essay writing style. This included a drop-in clinic, booked appointments, and seminars for larger courses on specific writing styles and tasks (e.g. writing literature reviews).
June 2018: Internal Examiner for BA course ‘Ancient Western Asia’, University of Birmingham. My role was to grade BA exams taken for the undergraduate course.
April 2016: Taught support seminars for the course ‘Ancient Western Asia’, University of Birmingham. My role was to provide additional seminars which ran concurrently with the main lecture course for BA students. The seminars I taught were on the theme of ‘Gender in Mesopotamia’.
Public Science:
2023-present: Co-host of podcast ‘Thin End of the Wedge’. The podcast aims at sharing the most recent research in ancient Near Eastern studies, with a specific goal of highlighting the research of early career scholars and those from the Middle East. It presents research in an accessible manner for the general public, and is free to listen to.
Open access data. All of my digital research is published with an accompanying Zenodo repository that has all of the relevant data and files to the research. It is free to access, and I am improving the accessibility of the data I upload.
Leadership roles in collaborative projects:
- I initiated and led the project that resulted in Bennett, Tambs, & Lindén 2024. I found interested co-authors, drove the project, and provided Assyriological input. The project resulted in a peer-reiewed article which received the Team 1 publication prize from ANEE.
- Led the design and creation of ANEE’s Lexical portal (version 2). Required co-ordination and collaboration with one post-doctoral researcher and one web developer.
Event Organisation:
Present – August 2026: Co-organiser of workshop ‘Shaping Men, Shaping Worlds: Masculinities in Ancient Western Asia’, University of Helsinki. My role is the local liaison, and I am organising the praciticalities such as room bookings, coffee breaks, conference dinners, and so on. I am also ensuring the scientific rigour of the submitted abstracts with my co-organiser, Gioele Zisa (Sapienza University, Rome). We plan for our collaboration to continue in the form of an edited volume of the proceedings of this workshop.
Present – May 2026: Co-organiser of workshop ‘Emotions in the Biblical Sources, the Ancient Near East, and Antiquity’, Research Conference in Theology and Religion 2026, University of Helsinki. My role has been to solicit abstracts for the workshop within the larger conference. I have also reviewed abstracts for scientific rigour alongside my co-organiser Dr. Marika Pulkkinen (University of Helsinki).
2023-2024: Member of Scientific and Organising Committee for the Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (RAI) 69. RAI is the largest European conference in Assyriology, and we planned the event for 400 scholars. My role was to ensure the scientific rigour of the submitted abstracts for the proposed workshops, as well as abstracts for papers submitted to the general sessions. I also was initially in charge of logos and designing other materials.
2021-2024: Member of Organising Committee for GeMANE 5 & 6. Role: reviewed abstracts; oversaw practicalities and logistics. For GeMANE 5 I ensured local logistics and practicalities ran smoothly, as it was hosted at the University of Helsinki.
Service to the Field:
2021-2025: Member of the ANEE Ethics Committee. Members worked equally to ensure ethical accountability of ANEE. We paid special attention to members returning to work in university premises after the Covid-19 pandemic.
2025: Best Practice Guidelines. I have been part of two projects aimed at establishing best practices within the field of ancient Near East studies. One has resulted in a white paper on collaboration and co-writing.
Peer Review (2019, 2023, 2024, 2025). Peer reviewer for the international journals AVAR, Rosetta, Studia Orientalia, and Journal for Ancient Near Eastern History (JANEH).
Invited Talks:
May 2021: ‘The “Queens of the Arabs” During the Neo-Assyrian Period’, Committee of Manuscript and Text Cultures Seminar Series, University of Oxford.
Dec. 2019: ‘Ethnicities, Status, and Programming; Alternative Approaches to Gender in the ancient Near East’, University of Uppsala.
Dec. 2019: ‘Questioning Assumptions: Studying Gender in the ancient Near East’, University of Uppsala.
International Conference Participation:
Feb. 2026: ‘Mercy in the Construction of Assyrian Royal Masculinities.’ GeMANE 7, Sapienza Università di Roma.
April 2024: ‘Wombs, Testicles, Penises, Oh My! A Distant Reading Approach to Genitals in the Neo-Assyrian Corpus.’ GeMANE 6, University of Malta.
Nov. 2023: ‘Hot Heads and Livers: Comparing Akkadian and English Embodiments of ‘Anger’’. ASOR Annual Meeting, Chicago, USA.
Sept. 2023: ‘Using Word Embeddings for Identifying Emotions Relating to the Body in a Neo-Assyrian Corpus’. Ancient Language Processing Workshop, Varna.
July 2023: ‘“My liver heated up”’: analysing the emotions felt in the liver in Neo-Assyrian texts using digital techniques’. Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale 68, Leiden.
April 2023: ‘Challenges in Building Akkadian Co-Occurence Networks for Comparative Research.’ Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA), Amsterdam.
Nov. 2022: ‘“I captured her alive”. The ‘Queens of the Arabs’ as a case study of Neo-Assyrian etiquette regarding women and physical violence.’ ‘Manners, Etiquette, and Protocols in the Ancient Near East II’ session at ASOR Annual Meeting, Boston, USA.
Sept. 2022: ‘Neo-Assyrian Arabs and Orientalist Interpretations.’ 15th Melammu Symposium, Graz.
Sept. 2021: ‘Arabian “queens” or “female kings”? Defining šarratu during the Neo-Assyrian period.’ QUEEN: REIMAGINING POWER FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE PRESENT, online, based in Australia.
July 2021: ‘Seeing the Forest Despite the Trees: A Topological Network Analysis of Neo-Assyrian Masculinities.’ Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale 67, Turin.
June 2021: ‘Age and Masculinities in the Neo-Assyrian Period: A Network Analysis’, GeMANE 4, online, based in Helsinki.
March 2021: ‘The “Queen of Sheba”, or the “Queens of the Arabs”?’, “Modern” Women of the Past? Unearthing Gender and Antiquity (online).
Dec. 2019: ‘Beards in the formulation of the gender of foreign kings in the Neo-Assyrian Period’, ‘The King as a Nodal Point of Neo-Assyrian Identity’, Helsinki.
April 2019: ‘“I am a man”, Masculinities in the Titles of the Neo-Assyrian kings in the Royal Inscriptions’, Advanced Seminar in the Humanities 2018-2019 programme, Venice. Tutor: Rocío Da Riva.
Aug. 2017: ‘Queens in the Sand: The Problems of Investigating Neo-Assyrian Battles’, European Association of Archaeologists 2017, Maastricht. Received funding from the University of Birmingham for travel and accommodation.
April 2016: ‘Queen Tabua of the Arabs: gender in foreign policy’, Oxford Postgraduate Conference in Assyriology (OPCA), University of Oxford. Received funding from the University of Birmingham for travel and accommodation.
July 2015: ‘Samsi, Queen of the Arabs’, Seminar for Arabian Studies, London. Received funding from the University of Birmingham for travel and accommodation.
National Conference Participation:
Aug. 2025: ‘Data Maketh Man: Comparing Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Masculinities in Lexical Networks’, Centre of Excellence in Ancient Near Eastern Empires Annual Meeting, Turku.
Jan. 2023: ‘Hot Heads and Hot Livers: Neo-Assyrian Emotions and the Body’, Finnish Conference on Ancient Studies, Helsinki.
Dec. 2021: ‘Mobility as Diplomacy: The Case Study of Tabu’a’, Sixth Finnish Colloquium for Middle East and North African Studies, online/Helsinki.
May 2016: ‘Tribes and Camels: Magee’s Interpretation of Assyrian Intervention in Arabia’, Birmingham Assyriology Symposium, Birmingham.
Posters Presented:
Sept. 2023: ‘Embodied Emotions of the Liver in Neo-Assyrian Texts Using Networks and Word Embeddings’, Connected Pasts, Helsinki.
Sept. 2016: ‘Queens at War: “Queens of the Arabs” and their Conflict with the Neo-Assyrian Empire’, Melammu 10, Kassel. Received funding from the University of Birmingham for travel and accommodation.
June 2015: ‘Queens of the Arabs’, University of Birmingham Graduate School Poster Conference, Birmingham.
Seminar Talks:
Nov. 2021: ‘The šarrat aribi: bridging the gap between Assyriology and Arabian Archaeology’, Helsinki Archaeology Seminar, University of Helsinki, Finland.
Oct. 2020: ‘Using Networks to Investigate Semantics of Masculinities During the Neo-Assyrian Period’, Ancient Medieval Middle East Seminar, University of Helsinki, Finland.
Aug. 2020: ‘The “Queens of the Arabs” During the Neo-Assyrian Period’, Centre of Excellence in Ancient Near Eastern Empires PhD Seminar, University of Helsinki, Finland.
May 2016: ‘The Diplomatic Roles of Samsi, “Queen of the Arabs”’, Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology Colloquium, University of Birmingham, UK.
Ellie Bennett 