Irene Sibbing Plantholt active right now

As I am a PhD student in ancient Mesopotamian studies and spend most of my day reading 3000 year old clay tablets, I am not very savvy with new media and technology.. but I do believe that this, together with interdisciplinarity, is the future of my field. Too long the fascinating Mesopotamian world has been hidden from nonspecialists; it is time to make it easily accessible to the public. And, to make it easier for Assyriologists to share their knowledge and research. One way of doing so is by publishing the wealth of Mesopotamian text material online. Oracc, an open-access web resource (see website) created by my supervisor Steve Tinney, professor of Assyriology at Upenn, allows for Assyriologists to share their knowledge and text editions, and for everyone else who is interested to access these texts in translation - for research, teaching purposes, or personal interest. I recently started to put up the corpus I study for my PhD research, concerning healing and healing deities in Mesopotamia, on Oracc. I am interested in discussing the options for intensifying the collaboration between specialists among each other, crossing disciplinary boundaries (in particular in light of healing and medicine) and bridging the gap between scholarly and popular realms with the use of modern technology.

Position/Job Title:PhD student
Organization:UPenn
RCHN Mellon Mellon