Evelyne Koubková Receives Important Award for Best Dissertation

Evelyne Koubková, a former PhD student in the NELC Department now holding a position as Assistant Professor of Assyriology at the Research Center for West Asian Civilizations at the University of Tsukuba (Japan), has received the International Association for Assyriology (IAA) Dissertation Prize.

The IAA Dissertation Prize is awarded annually for the best PhD dissertation in the field of Assyriology (understood broadly to include all cuneiform studies) and Mesopotamian Archaeology. It is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious distinctions for early-career scholars in these disciplines.

Dr. Koubková received her PhD from Yale University in May 2025 with a dissertation entitled “How Rituals Shape Authority: The Mesopotamian Exorcist’s Self-Presentation in Ritual Texts and Practice.” Her Yale advisors were Eckart Frahm (primary) and Benjamin R. Foster, with Daniel Schwemer of the University of Würzburg (Germany) serving as an outside adviser. Dr. Koubková’s thesis, written with methodological rigor and an excellent grasp of the cuneiform sources, provides the first comprehensive study of the so-called ashipu, a religious specialist who played a central role in ancient Mesopotamian magic, medicine, and scholarship. Drawing on numerous texts written in Sumerian and Babylonian, the thesis focuses on the ritual strategies the ashipu used to construe his identity and authority before the gods and his patients.