About the authors:
Conrad Schmidt is a research fellow within the framework of his own German Research Foundation (DFG) project at the Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies (IANES) of the University of Tübingen. The focus of his work is the socio-economic development and the material culture of the Ancient Near East in the Early Bronze Age (3rd millennium BC). Conrad studied Near Eastern Archaeology and the Philology of the Ancient Near East at the universities of Leipzig, Halle-Wittenberg, London (UCL and SOAS) and Tübingen. He wrote his PhD thesis on the Early and Middle Bronze Age pottery of Tell Mozan, Syria (2007, summa cum laude). Afterwards he held a full-time position in the Qatna project of the University of Tübingen. Conrad has conducted various archaeological research projects in the Sultanate of Oman since 2010, including Bat, Al-Khashbah and UmWeltWandel.
Stephanie Döpper’s research focusses on Eastern Arabia’s rich archaeological heritage, the transformation of cultural heritage through the reuse of built space, and Digital Humanities. Following the completion of her doctoral studies in Near Eastern Archaeology, she conducted postdoctoral research at the universities of Leiden and Frankfurt am Main. She led several research projects, including a DFG-funded archaeological survey in the Sultanate of Oman, an interdisciplinary project exploring abandoned mud-brick villages in Oman through the collaboration of Near Eastern Archaeology, Sociology, and Islamic Studies (funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation), a Digital Public Archaeology endeavour that developed a smartphone app for self-guided tours (supported by the VW Foundation), and a project focused on rock art (funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation). Between October 2022 and September 2023, she substituted for the Junior Professor of Digital Humanities for Near Eastern Archaeology and Assyriology at the University of Würzburg. Since October 2023, she has held the position of Professor for Cultural Heritage at the University of Heidelberg.