Willem van Peursen

Prof. Willem van Peursen is a Full Professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam's Faculty of Religion and Theology and affiliated with the Network Institute. He holds dual expertise in Old Testament studies and computational analysis of ancient texts. His research focuses on Hebrew and Syriac biblical texts, leveraging Digital Humanities and AI advancements.

• Education: Masters in Theology & Semitic Languages (Leiden University, 1995), PhD (Leiden, 1999 cum laude)
• Postdoctoral work on Syriac Ben Sira (2000–2005)
• NWO-Vidi project (2005–2010) on Peshitta/Targum analysis

Research interests include computational linguistic analysis of ancient texts, Syriac/Peshitta studies, and AI applications in biblical studies. He leads projects like 'Morphological Parser for Inflectional Languages Using Deep Learning' and 'Seeing The Words: Evaluating AI-generated Biblical Art'.

Teaching includes Hebrew Bible exegesis, digital hermeneutics, Syriac language courses, and Bible translation in the digital age. His work contributes to UN SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals) through interdisciplinary collaborations.