Eleanor Bennett

Eleanor Bennett is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre of Excellence in Ancient Near Eastern Empires (ANEE) within the Department of Languages, Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki. Her research bridges traditional Assyriology with cutting-edge digital methodologies to explore gender, emotions, and embodiment in Neo-Assyrian texts.

Dr. Bennett's research interests focus on Ancient Near Eastern Studies with particular emphasis on the Neo-Assyrian period. She employs digital humanities approaches including network analysis, word embeddings, and computational linguistics to investigate how emotions were embodied in ancient texts, gender constructions in royal contexts, and the political significance of terms like 'šarratu' (queen). Her work uniquely combines close textual reading with distant reading techniques to uncover patterns invisible through traditional philological methods alone.

Her publications reveal a consistent trajectory toward increasingly sophisticated computational analyses of Neo-Assyrian texts. Beginning with studies of royal titulature and gendered power structures, her work has evolved to incorporate advanced network analysis of co-attestation patterns and machine learning approaches to emotional semantics. This progression demonstrates her commitment to pushing methodological boundaries in Assyriological research while maintaining rigorous philological foundations.

• ANEE Team 1 Publication Prize (2022)

Dr. Bennett actively participates in multiple significant research projects including 'Embodied Emotions: Ancient Mesopotamia and Today' (2022-2025) and ANEE Team 1: Digital Humanities Approaches. She has presented her work at numerous international conferences including the Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale and ASOR Annual Meeting, and has contributed to collaborative projects examining gender methodology in Ancient Near Eastern studies. Her grant-funded research demonstrates her ability to secure competitive funding and collaborate effectively across disciplinary boundaries.

As a member of the Centre of Excellence in Ancient Near Eastern Empires, Dr. Bennett works within a vibrant interdisciplinary team that includes scholars from history, archaeology, computer science, and cognitive science. She has co-organized workshops such as the Fifth Workshop on Gender, Methodology and the Ancient Near East and has taught in the Digital Applications in Assyriology Nordic Summer School, demonstrating her commitment to building scholarly communities and training the next generation of researchers in digital methods.