Jonathan

Valk

Jonathan Valk is a historian of the ancient Middle East. He specializes in the history of Assyria in the first and second millennia BCE, a region at the intersection between the cuneiform tradition centered in southern Iraq and the West Semitic traditions of the Levant. He also has a broader interest in social, economic, and comparative history, in the form and functioning of states, and in the application of theory and method from the social sciences to ancient evidence. Dr. Valk is the author of the book Ancient Assyrians: Identity and Society in Antiquity and Beyond (Cambridge University Press, 2025) and co-editor of Ancient Taxation: The Mechanics of Extraction in Comparative Perspective (New York University Press, 2021). He has published widely on different subjects in various journals and edited volumes.

Dr. Valk obtained his Ph.D. from New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (2018) and holds further degrees from the University of Oxford (2007), the University of Chicago (2009), and New York University (2015). He has held professional appointments as University Lecturer in Assyriology at Leiden University (2018–2021), as a Postdoctoral and then a University Researcher at the University of Helsinki (2021–2025), and as a Visiting Professor at the University of Pavia (2022). He also holds the title of Docent in Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Helsinki.

At the ILC, Dr. Valk is the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council Starting Grant project The Aramaization of the Middle East: Revisiting the Fall and Rise of Written Traditions (ARAMAIZATION), 2025–2030. This project revisits the displacement of the Sumero-Akkadian written tradition by Aramaic in the Middle East in the first half of the first millennium BCE.