Ellie Bennett is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki whose focus is on Ancient Near Eastern history. She is particularly interested in applying innovative digital methods to Ancient Near Eastern material, which she is applying to this project and the study of emotions. She also has an interest in gender and identity.
Photo by Lauri Laine.
Juha Lahnakoski's work focuses on social and emotional dimensions of behaviour and brain activity with a particular interest in the development of quantitative interpersonal markers of natural social functioning in psychiatric and healthy populations.
Lauri Nummenmaa is professor of medical imaging at Turku PET Centre. His group studies molecular, metabolic, and functional basis of human emotions in health and disease.
Professor Mikko Sams is an experimental psychologist and neuroscientist, who has studied several aspects of human cognitive functions, spanning from auditory perceptions to neural mechanisms of emotions and social interactions. He is a passionate promotor of interdisciplinary approaches in understanding the complicated mechanisms of human cognition, emphasizing its strongly social nature. Currently he is a science director of the MAGICS infrastructure.
Ulrike Steinert is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz (Germany), and principal investigator within the project “Akkadian and Hittite Emotions in Context” (AHEC) funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation, DFG). Her research and publications focus on the history of ancient Mesopotamian medicine, women’s health, the Akkadian language, body and gender concepts, as well as on the study of metaphor and emotions.
Saana Svärd is Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Studies and the director of the Centre of Excellence in Ancient Near Eastern Empires (2018-2025) at University of Helsinki. In her published work, she has adapted and developed approaches from digital humanities and linguistic semantics as well as from gender studies to gain new perspectives on cuneiform sources.
Photo by Veikko Somerpuro.