Francesca Nebiolo

Francesca Nebiolo is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow and Visiting Scholar at NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. She received her PhD in Assyriology from the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE–PSL, Paris) under the supervision of Professor Dominique Charpin, and previously held research positions at the Collège de France and Sapienza University of Rome. She specializes in the epistolary, diplomatic, and legal documentation of the Old Babylonian period, with particular expertise in oral commitments, oath-taking practices, and the political and legal culture of ancient Mesopotamia. Her research focuses especially on the archives of Northern Mesopotamia and the Diyala region, combining philological, historical, and archival approaches to investigate how information was produced, transmitted, and legitimized in ancient societies.

Her previous research has explored the role of oral commitments and oaths in Old Babylonian legal and diplomatic practice, examining how spoken acts acquired legal force and contributed to the creation of social and political obligations. More broadly, she is interested in the relationship between language, authority, and institutional practice, as well as in the ways cuneiform archives preserve the dynamics of communication, negotiation, and political decision-making in the ancient Near East.

At ISAW, she will carry out the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship project TANES (Truth, Truthlikeness, and Trust: Shaping Reality in Ancient Near Eastern Societies). The project investigates how formal truths were constructed and how information, misinformation, and rhetorical strategies shaped political and legal realities in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia. Combining Assyriology with philosophy of language, information theory, and digital humanities, TANES examines the relationship between truth, trust, and authority in ancient societies while developing new digital tools to analyse and visualize ancient communication networks. By examining letters, treaties, and legal documents, the project explores how information was shaped, transmitted, and trusted in Old Babylonian society, and how these processes influenced political authority and social relationships.