Wouter Henkelman is associate professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris), where he is responsible for Elamite and Achaemenid studies. His research interests include Elam and the Elamite language as well as the Achaemenid world in widest sense.
Henkelman studied classical philology (specialisation: ancient Greek) in Leiden and ancient history (specialisation: Achaemenid languages and culture) in Utrecht. He obtained his doctoral degree (cum laude) in 2006 at Leiden University with a dissertation entitled The Other Gods Who Are: Studies in Elamite-Iranian Acculturation Based on the Persepolis Fortification Texts, which was subsequently published by the NINO in the Achaemenid History series (vol. 14; 2008).
Following his doctoral research in Leiden, Henkelman held several post-doctoral positions, first at the Collège de France (Paris), followed by VU University Amsterdam. In both cases his research focused on the Elamite clay tablets from the Persepolis Fortification Archive. Since 2006 Henkelman is fomally charged by the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago with the publication of some 3000 of these tablets. In 2012, the same research led to his election as Alexander von Humboldt advanced research fellow at Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Berlin.
Prior and and parallel to his Paris teaching appointment, Henkelman taught at the ancient history department of Utrecht University (1995-2000) and the ancient studies department of VU University (2002-2011) and held a guest professorship at the Leopold-Franzens Universität of Innsbruck (2010). In addition, he has taught seminars and summerschools on the Elamite language, the Fortification archive and the Achaemenid empire at Istanbul (NIT), Oxford (Corpus Christi and Wolfson College), Leiden, Münster, and Naples. Since 2013, he annually offers three intensive classes in Tehran, at the Institute for the Great Encyclopaedia of Islam.
Henkelman has initiated and coordinates the international Bīsotūn project, aimed at a new, synoptic edition of the inscriptions and relief of Darius the Great at the rock of Bīsotūn (Kermanšāh, Iran). The volume is to be published by the NINO in the Achaemenid History series, of which Henkelman is the acting series editor.
Select publications
- 2003 [with A. Kuhrt], A Persian Perspective: Essays in Memory of Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg (Achaemenid History XIII), Leiden 2003.
- 2008, The Other Gods Who Are. Studies in Elamite-Iranian Acculturation Based on the Persepolis Fortification Texts (Achaemenid History XIV), Leiden.
- 2008 [with P. Briant & M.W. Stolper], L’archive des Fortifications de Persépolis: État des questions et perspectives de recherches (Persika XII), Paris.
- 2014 [with M. Kozuh, C.E. Jones & C. Woods], Extraction and Control: Studies in Honor of Matthew W. Stolper (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 68), Chicago.
- 2003, Persians, Medes and Elamites. Acculturation in the Neo-Elamite period, in: G. Lanfranchi, et al. (eds.), Continuity of Empire (?): Assyria, Media, Persia (History of the Ancient Near East / Monographs series 5), Padova: 181-231, pls. 9-15.
- 2003, with H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg, Xerxes anno 1918: The Persian Wars as l’art pour l’art, in: M. Haagsma, P. den Boer & E.M. Moormann (eds.), The Impact of Classical Greece on European and National Identities. Proceedings of an international colloquium, held at the Netherlands Institute at Athens (Publications of The Netherlands Institute in Athens 4), Amsterdam 2003: 181-213.
