Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten

21/06/2026

NINO THESIS PRIZES 2026 – Students in ancient Near Eastern Studies, have you recently turned in your BA or MA thesis? Then you’re surely biting your nails now, waiting for your grades…

If you receive a really good mark, you can send in your BA or (r)MA thesis on Egyptology, Assyriology, archaeology of Anatolia or the Levant, literature or philology of Semitic languages to compete for a NINO Thesis Prize!

The best BA Thesis on the Ancient Near East written in study year 2025-2026 will win € 400, and the best MA Thesis € 600. Submission is now open until 1 October. Full regulations and conditions at https://www.nino-leiden.nl/funding/nino-thesis-prizes

18/06/2026

CALL FOR PAPERS – The MARE project invites proposals for contributions to a conference at the University of Groningen, 28–29 January 2027:

Mortuary Ritual in the Roman Near East. Current Work and Future Directions.

This conference is dedicated to theoretical approaches to mortuary rituals in the Roman Near East—an area that often receives less attention than Rome and the western provinces. Rather than focusing on mortuary archaeology as a proxy for social structure, economic welfare, lived experiences, and health, the organisers seek to discuss how mortuary remains can help us better understand the process of responding to death.

Junior and senior scholars of mortuary ritual in or related to the Roman Near East are invited to send proposals for papers and posters by Friday, July 24th, 2026.

Full information: https://www.rug.nl/research/groningen-institute-of-archaeology/research/mare/conference-2027

17/06/2026

NINO POSTDOC 2026 – We are very pleased to announce that Dr Nicola Barbagli is our new NINO Postdoctoral Researcher, starting 1 September 2026! Nicola’s research will focus on Roman emperors and Egypt, and this is also the subject of the conference he is to organise in Leiden (2027). Another part of his duties will be teaching a graduate course, open to students in the Netherlands through OIKOS, the National Research School in Classical Studies.

NINO was fortunate to receive a large number of applications again this year, from which our search committee made a selection to interview. It was not easy to choose between several excellent candidates! Nicola will be a valuable addition to our community in the Netherlands, and we thank our search committee for their work.

01/06/2026

Gisteren vond de NINO/EOL-voorjaarslezing plaats. Dit jaar sprak Ben van den Bercken (conservator archeologische collectie Egypte en Soedan bij het Allard Pierson) over de collectie van F. W. von Bissing, en hoe die collectie verworven is en verspreid is geraakt.

21/05/2026

NEW PUBLICATION – The Kingdom of Kizzuwatna: Recent Developments in Research. Proceedings of the Third NINO Postdoctoral Research Fellow Annual Conference, Leiden, 23rd-25th March 2023 (PIHANS 137). Edited by Andrea Trameri.

Twelve contributions on a wide array of topics related to the kingdom of Kizzuwatna, a local polity in southern Anatolia during the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1600–1200 BCE). The aim of the volume is to offer an updated view of the kingdom of Kizzuwatna, reflecting recent research developments, discoveries, and interpretations from a range of scholarly perspectives.

X, 214 pp. ISBN 978-90-429-5514-1.

Available in print (€ 100.70 incl. VAT) or in open access (free download) from Peeters Publishers!
https://www.nino-leiden.nl/publication/the-kingdom-of-kizzuwatna-recent-developments-in-research

13/05/2026

TMA CALL FOR PAPERS – Tijdschrift voor Mediterrane Archeologie accepteert nu nieuwe bijdragen voor de 75e en 76e edities! Stuur je voorstel in voor 24 mei a.s.

Tijdschrift voor Mediterrane Archeologie - TMA is een Nederlands tijdschrift (verschijnt twee keer per jaar) over actueel archeologisch onderzoek naar Mediterrane archeologie en geschiedenis, met een focus op Nederlandse en Vlaamse onderzoekers en universiteiten. Bekijk de bijgevoegde call for papers voor meer details.

Artikelen in TMA zijn Nederlandstalig, hebben een omvang van 1500 tot 3000 woorden, en komen uit de vakgebieden archeologie, geschiedenis en kunstgeschiedenis. Richtlijnen: https://tijdschrift.mediterrane-archeologie.nl/voor-auteurs

Wil je een artikel indienen? Stuur voor 24 mei 2026 een voorlopige titel, abstract van ca. 250 woorden en korte auteursomschrijving naar [email protected]

13/05/2026

PHD POSITION IN UTRECHT – The Protestant Theological University (PThU; Utrecht, the Netherlands) has a vacancy for a PhD candidate for the project “God(s) and Morality in the Ancient Near East including the Hebrew Bible” (1 fte, 4 years, or 0,8 fte, 5 years). Apply until 31 May 2026:

https://www.pthu.nl/over-pthu/vacatures/phd-candidate-moral-compass-centre-gods-and-morality-in-the-an/

09/05/2026

BABYLON, MIRROR OF THE HELLENISTIC NEAR EAST – Babylonian Chronographic Texts from the Hellenistic Period: A critical edition of the so-called Babylonian Chronicles and historical sections of the Babylonian Astronomical Diaries was published in May 2025 by Bert van der Spek, Irving Finkel, Reinhard Pirngruber, and Kathryn Stevens.

On 5 June 2026, a symposium on the new publication will be organised at the VU. Six experts will discuss the subject of Babylon as a mirror of political, social and religious developments in the Near East during the Hellenistic period, taking into account local changes in Babylonia itself since the Neo-Babylonian Empire.

Practical information
• date: Friday 5 June 2026
• venue: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, main building, Agora 3
• time: 9:45-18:15
• language: English
• admission: free – registration required

More information and registration: https://vu.nl/en/events/2026/babylon-mirror-of-the-hellenistic-near-east

The symposium is organised by Shiyanthi Thavapalan, Shana Zaia, Bert van der Spek, and Bas ter Haar Romeny, in collaboration with the Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO) and the LUCE Fund of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

06/05/2026