Eductaion

08/2020
PhD, summa cum laude (with highest distinction). Title: „Thirdspace in Assyria and Urartu“ Supervisors: Prof. Reinhard Bernbeck, Prof. Susan Pollock | Institute of Near Eastern Archaeology, Free University Berlin (FUB)

07/2019 – 11/2019
PhD Completion Scholarship | FAZIT-Stiftung, Frankfurt a.M.

09/2018 – 06/2019
Junior Fellow | Koç University Istanbul, Turkey, Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED)

01/2018 – 05/2018
Visiting Fellow | Harvard University, USA, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Department of AnthropologySupervisor: Prof. Jason Ur

10/2015 – 09/2018
Doctoral Fellow | Excellence cluster Topoi, Berlin, Research group: ”Space-identity-locality. The construction of knowledge relatedidentity spaces”, PhD scholarship

11/2015 – 08/2020
PhD student, Institute of Near Eastern Archaeology, FU Berlin | Berlin Graduate School of Ancient Studies, PhD program: Landscape archaeology and architecture (LAA)

09/2014 – 03/2015
Exchange semester at | Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne, France, Département histoire de l’art et archéologie, Supervisor: Prof. Pascal Butterlin

2013 – 2015
M.A. in History and Cultures of the Ancient Near East | FU Berlin Institute of Near Eastern Archaeology | Grade: 1,0 (excellent), Thesis: Biography of building 10 in aeneolithic Monjukli Depe, Turkmenistan

2011 – 2012
One year study program | Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Istanbul, Turkey, Department of History, Supervisor: Prof. Aslı Özyar

2011 – 2015
Fellow of the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes e.V.)

2009 – 2013
B.A. in Ancient Studies | FU Berlin Institute of Near Eastern Archaeology

Work Experience

Since 01/2020
Postdoctoral Researcher | DFG Research Training Group 1913 ”Cultural andTechnological Significance of Historic Buildings” Brandenburg University of Technology, Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany. Project: ”Internal Colonization as a Way of Modernization? Contested Spaces inRural Turkey before and after the Foundation of the Nation-State” with architect Dr. Özge Sezer

2017/2018
Voluntary German teacher for (forced) migrants | ”Netzwerk Neukölln”, Berlin

2015
Working student at the editorial office of the excellence cluster Topoi Berlin editorial work: page formats, literature database, editing of form and content

03/2015 – 04/2015
Internship at the German Consulate General in Lyon (France)

11/2013 – 08/2014
Student assistant at the library of the Insitute of Near Eastern Archaeologyand Assyriology | FU Berlin book orders, cataloging, transistion to a new signature system

11/2012 – 02/2013
Working student at the Tell Schech Hamad project Director: Prof. Hartmut Kühne | FU Berlin Digitalization of the archaeological plans in AutoCAD and Adobe Illustrator

10/2010 – 07/2011
Internship at the Tell Schech Hamad project Director: Prof. Hartmut Kühne | FU Berlin

03/2010 – 04/2011
Student assistant | German Archaeological Institute in Berlin (DAI) Project Hamadab and Meroë, Director: Dr. Simone Wolf

Field Work

08/2016 – 10/2016
Excavation member/trench supervisor in Gird-i Bazar (Iraqi-Kurdistan) Director: Prof. Karen Radner (LMU München) and Prof. Janoscha Kreppner (WWU Münster)

2016
Support of the excavations at the campus of FU Berlin (Dahlem, Harnackstraße), former area of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Anthropologie (WW II) Directors: Prof. Susan Pollock and Prof. Reinhard Bernbeck (FU Berlin)

08/2015
Member of the excavation project at the once so-called „Halbmondlager“ during WWI in Wünsdorf (Brandenburg, Germany) Directors: Prof. Reinhard Bernbeck, Prof. Susan Pollock (FU Berlin); Brandenburgisches Landesamtfür Denkmalpflege; Archäologisches Landesmuseum; Firma ABD Dressler

08/2013 – 09/2013; 09/2014 – 10/2014
Member of the excavation project in Monjukli Depe (Turkmenistan) Directors: Prof. Reinhard Bernbeck, Prof. Susan Pollock |FU Berlin

07/2012 – 10/2012
Member of the regeneration campaign in Bo-gazköy-Hattu.sa (Turkey) Director: PD Dr. Andreas Schachner | DAI Istanbul Electronical drawing of architectural plans, processing of pottery and small finds, database work

08/2010
Participation at the training Excavation in Leimbach (Südharzvorland, Germany) Director: Prof. Michael Meyer | FU Berlin

Talks

29. Jan. 2020
Talk at Brandenburg University of Technology, title ”Internal Colonization as a Way of Modernization? Contested Spaces in Rural Turkey before and after the Foundation of the Nation-State ” with Dr. Özge Sezer

26. June 2019
Talk at the Workshop ”Geosophy”, Zentrum für Geoinformation ZfG, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel title ”Geosophy as a progressive political agenda in a positivistic discipline”

15. May 2019
Talk at the ANAMED Fellow’s Symposium in Istanbul, Turkey, title ”Urartian-Assyrian Relations through the Lens of Everyday Sensory Experience of Space in Times of Military Conflict”, Session ”Eastern Anatolia“

14. April 2019
Talk at the Annual Meeting der Society of American Archaeologists in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, title ”Lived Space of Displaced People: A Comparative Approach to Contested Spaces in Iron Age Northern Mesopotamia and Modern Europe“; Session ”Contested Landscapes: The Archaeology of Politics, Borders, and Movement“

04. April 2019
Talk at the Verbandstagung des WSVA und MOVA in Würzburg, title “’I like to keep my archaeology dead’. Entfremdung und ’Othering’ der Vergangenheit als ethisches Problem”, by Stefan Schreiber, Sabine Neumann and Vera Egbers, Session ”Mensch, Körper, Tod. Der Umgang mit menschlichen Überresten im Neolithikum (AG TidA, Theories in Archaeology)

25./26. May 2018
Talk at the ”Colloque sur l’Éthique en Archéologie” in Paris, France, title ”’I like to keep my archaeology dead’” – Alienation and Othering of the Past as an Ethical Problem” with Stefan Schreiber and Sabine Neumann

19./20. June 2017
Organization of the Workshops ”Subaltern Spaces” at the excellence cluster Topoi in Berlin, with Prof. Reinhard Bernbeck (and talk)

08. Juni 2017
Talk at the conference ”Broadening Horizons 5” in Udine, Italy, title ”’An Assyrian in Urartu’. Lived Space in Iron Age Northern Mesopotamia”

03. Nov. 2016
Talk at the Meeting of the Key Topic Identities Think Tank Topoi, Berlin, title ”Thirdspaces in early first millennium Mesopotamia”

07. Okt. 2014
Talk at the 8. Deutschen Archäologiekongress Berlin, title „Ästhetik und Macht: Porzellan des Amtes Schönheit der Arbeit“; Session: „Ordnungen des Wissens. Disziplinäre Macht im archäologischen Diskurs“

Thirdspace in Assyria and Urartu

This thesis deals with the formation and transformation of identities in ancient Assyria and Urartu by using H. Levebvres and E. Soja`s theoretical framework of the so called Thirdspace.

During the 1st millennium BCE, Assyria’s northern border was repeatedly the scene of armed conflicts with Urartu. The history of this Iron Age kingdom in the eastern Anatolian highlands was thus highly affected by the constant threat from the expanding empire to its south. In her thesis, Vera Egbers addresses the question of the effects of this interaction through consideration of the perception and production of space in each of these socio-political units. She does so based on the notion of “espace vécu” developed by the Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre. In his book “La production de l’espace” (1974), Lefebvre asserts that “space” is not a given, but a product. Every society produces its very own (social) space, consisting of a planned idea, material reality but also lived experience (espace vécu).

Using a sensory archaeological approach, I first reconstructs the planned experience of Urartian fortresses and Neo-Assyrian palaces. That is, she deduces each specific understanding of space (“spatial habitus”). She then compares the differences between those culturally produced spatialities, emphasizing the question of how an Assyrian subject experienced the Urartian environment (e.g. as prisoner of war) and vice versa.

This dissertation project was successfully completed within the Research Group B-4 Space - identity - locality. The construction of knowledge related identity spaces of the Excellenc Cluster 264 Topoi.

Forthcoming
Vera Egbers ”Geosophy in Archaeology: An Exemplary Study from Iron Age Mesopotamia”. In ”Berichte. Geographie und Landeskunde – Geosophy Special Issue”. Ricarda Braun, Daniel Knitter, Wolfgang Hamer (eds.). Forthcoming.

Vera Egbers and Buket Besikçi ”Ayanis Çevrisinin Cografi Özellikleri”. In ”Ayanis”. Mehmet Isikli (ed.). Forthcoming.

2019
Reinhard Bernbeck and Vera Egbers (eds.) ”Subalterne Räume. Versuch einer Übersicht”. Forum Kritische Archäologie 8, 2019, 59–71.

Vera Egbers ”’Ein Assyrer in Urartu’. Thirdspace in Eisenzeit in Nord-Mesopotamien”. In ”Subalterne Räume. Versuch einer Übersicht”. Forum Kritische Archäologie 8, 2019, 92–113. Reinhard Bernbeck and Vera Egbers (eds.).

Matthew Magnani, Dalyn Grindle, Sarah Loomis, Alexander Kim, Vera Egbers, Jon Clindaniel, Alexis Hartford, Eric Johnson, Sadie Weber and Wade Campbell ”Evaluating Claims for an Early Peopling of the Americas: Experimental Design and the Cerutti Mastodon Site”. Antiquity 93, 369, 2019, 789–795.

Vera Egbers ”A Biography of Building 10 in Monjukli Depe”. In ”Looking Closely. Excavations at Monjukli Depe, Turkmenistan, 2010–2014”. Peeters Leiden, 2019, 107–132. Susan Pollock and Reinhard Bernbeck (eds.).

Stefan Schreiber, Sabine Neumann and Vera Egbers “’I like to keep my archaeology dead’. Alienation and Othering of the Past as an Ethical Problem”. Canadian Journal of Bioethics” 2(3), 2019, 88–96.

2018
Stefan Schreiber, Carolin Jauss, Stephanie Merten, Martin Renger, Georg Cyrus, Vera Egbers, Dominik Bochatz, Philipp Tollkühn and Raimund Karl 2018 „Archäologie braucht Ethik! Ein Werkstattbericht als Diskussionsaufruf”. Archäologische Informationen 41, 2019, 341–370.

2017
Vera Egbers ”Chapter D. Excavating Gird-i Bazar: the 2016 Season”. In ”Unearthing the Dinka Settlement Complex: The 2016 Season at Gird-i Bazar and Qalat-i Dinka. Peshdar Plain Project Publications 2. Gladbeck: PeWe-Verlag, 2017, 57–103. Karen Radner, Janoscha Kreppner and Andrea Squitieri (eds.).

2016
Vera Egbers and Dominik Bochatz ”Hohe Kongresskosten als Werkzeug in der Ordnung des archäologischen Diskurses?” Blickpunkt Archäologie 2016.1.