Fellowships
KIŠIB offers two short-term fellowships each year, supporting research stays of one month in Munich or Berlin. The programme fosters cooperation on an equal footing with West Asian scholars who are working on specific seal corpora excavated in their countries. Fellows have access to the project’s digital resources, research libraries, and the scientific environment of the host institutions. During their stay, they collaborate closely with the KIŠIB team on seal-related research and publications.
Applications are welcome. If you are interested in a fellowship, please contact us.
KIŠIB fellows
2025
Kepa Martinez Garcia
Timeframe: December 2025 at the BAdW/LMU in Munich and BBAW in Berlin
From: University of the Basque Country, Spain
Topic: Identities through sealings: Inter-urban relationships in Early Dynastic Mesopotamia
Kepa Garcia Martinez is an archaeologist specializing in Ancient West Asia, whose research focuses on the social and administrative organization of southern Mesopotamia during the late fourth and third millennia BCE, particularly through the study of cylinder seals and sealings as instruments of interurban relations and social representation.
As a Fellow of the Kishib Project, he spent several weeks in Munich and Berlin working closely with the project team. During this time, he familiarised himself with the KIŠIB database and its workflows, uploaded and revised entries, and worked with unpublished cylinder seals from the Montserrat Museum collection. He also collaborated with museum curators and project members to study and document seals not currently on public display, including the production of modern rollouts for documentation. In parallel, he took part in a series of scholarly meetings and discussions with colleagues working on related archaeological and epigraphic topics, visited relevant museum collections, and presented his research in a lecture at Freie Universität Berlin.