Team
Aleksandra Kubiak-Schneider, the PI of the project
Aleksandra is a historian of religions and epigraphist of various scripts of Middle Aramaic (from 200 BC-300 CE) and Greek inscriptions. Her research focuses broadly on the texts related to the diverse aspects of religious sphere: temple administration and economy, dedications, communication strategies with divinities, cultic professions, etc. She was involved in the Mapping Ancient Polytheisms project, contributing to the database with the evidence mostly from Palmyra.
Aleksandra earned her PhD degree in 2016 from the University of Warsaw. Her dissertation “Celui dont le nom est béni pour l’éternité”: Une étude des dédicaces sans théonymes à Palmyre”, published in 2021 in the series Religions of the Greco-Roman World of Brill, was co-supervised by prof. Françoise Briquel-Chatonnet from the University Paris IV-Sorbonne and reviewed by prof. Ted Kaizer from the University of Durham (UK). Between 2019 and 2020 she worked in the team of the project Mapping Ancient Polytheisms (https://map-polytheisms.huma-num.fr/?lang=en ), funded by an ERC Advance Grant led by prof. Corinne Bonnet. In the mid-2022 she was employed at the University of Wrocław as a post-doctoral researcher in the project NCN Maestro of prof. Krzysztof Nawotka on Epigraphic Cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean as a specialist of Semitic languages at the Institute of History of the University of Wrocław (more information on the institute see here: https://hist.uni.wroc.pl/Instytut-Historyczny/Instytut/Rys-historyczny only in Polish).
The idea of the project and of collaboration with the excellent team of the ancient historians from the University of Wrocław came up in late 2021, through the conversation with the current mentor of the project Al-At prof. Krzysztof Nawotka at the Montafoner Gipfeltreffen in Voralberg, Austria. He led Aleksandra through the process of application with improving her English and serving with good advices. And finally in the beginning of 2023 the project was successfully launched.
Sebastian Mazurek, doctoral student and fellow of the project
Sebastian is doctoral student at the University of Warsaw, preparing his PhD thesis „ΜΝΗΣΘΗ: The Memory of the living in the Greek inscriptions of Dura-Europos: genesis, influences, definitions, typology.” supervised by prof. Adam Łajtar. He is a student fellow of the project Al-At, People of the Gods. He is an epigrapher, specialising in the Aramaic and Greek inscriptions, focusing particularly on the commemorative texts from Dura-Europos. He is also an archaeologist excavating in Saudi-Arabia (Farasan Island) and Morocco. He collaborates with the IDEA Project as epigrapher, learning the Linked Open Data methods and contributing with the inscriptional datasets.
The tasks of the doctoral fellow are: completing the database, modelling data, improvements concerning inscriptional material, edition of a collaborative paper and representation of the project during conferences. Sebastian was introduced to the NodeGoat and Digital Humanities.
