I am currently a post-doctoral fellow in the Humanities at Stanford. I received my Ph.D in Near Eastern Studies from The Johns Hopkins University, where I majored in Archaeology and minored in Egyptology and in Akkadian.

In 2004, I began working as a subject matter expert for the Discover Babylon project, an inter-institutional collaboration to design and construct an educational video game for middle-school students about the origins of writing and literacy in the ancient Near East. The game, playable on a PC, can be downloaded here: http://www.discoverbabylon.org/

A brief article I wrote for about this experience can be found here: http://www.sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleId=672

As part of the project, I collaborated with our project partner the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (http://cdli.ucla.edu/) on scanning and cataloging each and every cuneiform inscribed object in the Walters Art Museum collection. The scanned images and related catalogue data is now a part of the CDLI database, and is openly available on the internet.

Discover Babylon is currently being developed with an eye toward securing funding for the next stage of the project, which explores the potential of multi-player, real-time, virtual worlds such as Second Life as a landscape for learning, and a prototype in Second Life is already under construction.

My work with the Discover Babylon project dovetailed nicely with my experience team-teaching the class The Ancient City of the Future at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). This experimental course integrated an introduction to the archaeology of ancient Syria and the translation of modern field documents into the creation of a virtual landscape/model, using digital 3d imaging techniques and architectural modeling software.

These experiences sparked my interest in the potential high-tech future of the Humanities in general, and Archaeology and Ancient History in particular. This spring (2008), I will be attending the ARCHAIA Training Seminar on Research Planning, Characterization, Conservation and Management in Archaeological sites (http://www.archaia.unibo.it/) where I will be participating in a section discussing the role and potential of collaborative technologies in terms of preservation, education, and scholarship.

My current scholarly interests include the ways in which virtual reconstructions are comparable to conceptual (re)constructions and interpretations of the past. I am also fascinated by the use of Assyrian and Babylonian imagery on Iraqi currency, postage stamps and public art, and would love to find a way to integrate the two, perhaps by focusing on the intersecting issues of cultural ownership, heritage, and nationalism.