Silvia Kutscher

Prof. Dr. Silvia Kutscher serves as Professor for the Theory and History of Multimodal Communication at the Institute of Archaeology, Humboldt University of Berlin since March 2016, a position established within the Cluster of Excellence Topoi. Her interdisciplinary work bridges linguistics, semiotics, and archaeology with particular focus on ancient Egyptian communication systems. She leads project B03 on Register variation and asymmetric communication in Ancient Egypt within the Collaborative Research Center 1412 "Register: Language Users' Knowledge of Situational-Functional Variation".

Her research centers on semiotics with emphasis on multimodal communication in ancient contexts. She has pioneered analytical methods for examining how spatial relations function as semiotic resources in pharaonistic communication, developing the theoretical framework for analyzing text-image compositions in Ancient Egypt. Her work creates crucial interdisciplinary connections between semiotic-linguistic multimodality research and Egyptology, revealing how dimensional aspects and spatial organization contribute to meaning-making in ancient artifacts.

Recent publications demonstrate her sustained focus on multimodal analysis of ancient Egyptian artifacts, particularly through the CaeMmCom Corpus project. Her scholarly trajectory shows consistent development from general linguistic theory to specialized application in ancient communication systems, increasingly incorporating digital humanities methodologies. This work represents significant advancement in understanding how ancient societies structured information through combined textual and visual means.

Prof. Kutscher holds leadership roles in academic organizations:

• Since 2018: Board member and co-leader of the Archaeology section of the German Society for Semiotics
• 2010-2013: Second chair of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS)
• 2014-2016: Advisory board member of DGfS

She directs the Working Group on Multimodal Communication in Ancient Egypt, which develops theoretically grounded analytical tools by combining semiotic-linguistic approaches with Egyptological expertise. This initiative also implements technological tools for annotating and querying multimodal artifact data across the text-object-space continuum.