The Young Academy, part of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), has appointed VU's Shiyanthi Thavapalan as a member. The assistant professor and Assyriologist is one of the fifty young scientists who shape the future of the network.
Shiyanthi Thavapalan is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities. She is an Assyriologist and teaches Languages and Cultures of the Ancient Near East. When announcing her membership on Tuesday, The Young Academy published this description of her work:
How did people in ancient times see the world around them? What ideas did they have about nature, knowledge, innovation and ingenuity - and how did they use technology to gain scientific insights? Assyriologist Shiyanthi Thavapalan studies cuneiform tablets and the material culture of ancient Iraq (circa 2000–500 BCE) to understand the relationship between people, their environment, and technology in Mesopotamia. Her research sheds new light on the deep and intertwined history of art and science.
Two years ago, Thavapalan won an NWO Vidi grant for her research 'An anthropology of the material world in ancient Mesopotamia'.
New scientific guard
The Young Academy is part of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). The platform has fifty younger members as representatives of the new scientific guard. Members are appointed for five years, and are committed to the future of science through research, advice, knowledge dissemination and other activities.