Willemijn Waal is Senior University Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Material and Immaterial Heritage studies at Leiden University. She specializes in the materiality of writing, literacy and orality in Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Anatolia and the Aegean. She also works on the links between classical and Near Eastern epic and literature. Willemijn Waal is Principal Investigator (PI) of the NWO-funded project ‘From Aleph to Alpha: The spread and development of alphabetic writing across the Mediterranean’.

More information about Willemijn Waal

Curriculum Vitae

Willemijn Waal obtained an MA in Classical Languages and an MA in Anatolian Languages at the University of Amsterdam. She completed her PhD at Leiden University in 2010 under the supervision of Professor Wilfred H. van Soldt and Professor Theo P. J. van den Hout. Her dissertation, The Source as Object. Studies in Hittite Diplomatics, examined the record management practices of the Hittite Empire (ca. 1650–1180 BCE) through an analysis of the physical features and textual metadata (notably colophons) of Hittite clay tablets. The dissertation was published as a monograph entitled Hittite Diplomatics. Studies in Ancient Document Format and Record Management (Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2015).

Following her doctoral studies, Willemijn Waal held several postdoctoral positions at Leiden University (2010–2012), Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (2012–2014), the Institute for Aegean Prehistory (INSTAP, 2015–2016), and the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS) through the National Research School OIKOS (2022–2023). She became a Lecturer (UD) at the Leiden Institute for Area Studies (LIAS) in 2012, where she organized a range of academic activities, and was appointed Director of Studies at LIAS in 2017. In 2019, she was invited to support the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University in the newly created role of Strategic Advisor for Internationalisation and Research Funding. From 2020 to 2024, Willemijn Waal served as Director of the Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO). She is currently Senior University Lecturer (Associate Professor) at LIAS, teaching in the programmes Ancient Near Eastern Studies and Classics and Ancient Civilizations.

Research

Willemijn Waal’s research focuses on the intersections of writing, literacy and orality in the ancient world, with particular emphasis on the Hittite Empire. In addition to her monograph, she has co-edited several volumes, including Constantinople through the ages: the visible city from its foundation to contemporary Istanbul (Brill, 2019), which explores the city’s long and rich history and its legacies still visible in present-day Istanbul; From LUGAL.GAL to Wanax (Sidestone, 2019), on political organization in Mycenaean Greece; and Alexander en Darius. Een Macedoniër in de spiegel van het oude Nabije Oosten (Uitgeverij Verloren, 2013), which examines the perception of Alexander the Great across time and in a variety of literary traditions. She has also authored numerous articles for both academic and popular audiences on various topics relating to Hittite Anatolia, including several new interpretations of lexemes with uncertain meanings.

In 2025, Willemijn Waal was awarded the NWO Vici grant for her research project From Aleph to Alpha: The Spread and Development of Alphabetic Writing across the Mediterranean. This project explores the hypothesis that the Greek alphabet is much older than traditionally assumed and that it was initially written on perishable materials that have not survived.

Teaching

Willemijn Waal teaches courses at the BA, MA, and Research MA levels. A small selection of these courses previously and currently given at Leiden University:

• Cultural History of Anatolia (BA)
• Advanced Language course Hittite II-III (BA)
• Languages and Writing Systems of the Mediterranean World (BA)
• Literature from Mesopotamia and Anatolia (BA)
• Ancient World seminar (MA)
• Critical Heritage Studies: the ancient Near East
• Epic Tales from the Ancient World ((RES)MA)

She also supervises BA, MA, and Research MA theses on a wide range of topics and has served on numerous PhD committees. She regularly gives guest lectures at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), Amsterdam University College (AUC), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam), and Utrecht University, as well as for HOVO and OIKOS.

Publications