Robert Rollinger (born 17 September 1964 in

Bludenz Bludenz (; Alemannic German, Alemannic: ''Bludaz'') is a town in the westernmost Austrian state of Vorarlberg with around 15,000 inhabitants. It is the administrative seat of the Bludenz District, which encompasses about half of Vorarlberg's territ ...

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

) is an

ancient historian Historiography is the study of the methods used by historians in developing history as an academic discipline. By extension, the term "historiography" is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific to ...

and

Assyriologist Assyriology (from Ancient Greek, Greek , ''Assyriā''; and , ''-logy, -logia''), also known as Cuneiform studies or Ancient Near East studies, is the archaeological, anthropological, historical, and linguistic study of the cultures that used cune ...

, known for his works on

Herodotus Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the '' Histori ...

, the Persian-Achaemenid Empire, ancient empires and cross-cultural encountering in the ancient world. He is a full professor at the

University of Innsbruck The University of Innsbruck (; ) is a public research university in Innsbruck, the capital of the Austrian federal state of Tyrol (state), Tyrol, founded on October 15, 1669. It is the largest education facility in the Austrian States of Austria, ...

and a full member of the

Austrian Academy of Sciences The Austrian Academy of Sciences (; ÖAW) is a legal entity under the special protection of the Republic of Austria. According to the statutes of the Academy its mission is to promote the sciences and humanities in every respect and in every fi ...

(ÖAW).

Academic career

He studied Ancient History, History, and Ancient Near East studies at the University of Innsbruck from 1984 to 1989, where he earned his MA in 1989 with an interdisciplinary thesis on ''Herodotus’ Babylonian Logos''. 1993, he earned his Ph.D with. a dissertation focused on early forms of historical thinking in the Ur III-period. In. In 1999, he finished his habilitation on cultural connections between Greece and the Ancient Near East during the 8th and 5th century BCE. He was a lecturer, senior lecturer and reader in the department of Ancient History and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Innsbruck from 1990 until 2005. Since 2005, he has been holding the chair for “cultural interactions between the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean” in the department of Ancient History and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Innsbruck. His academic teachers were Reinhold Bichler and Karl Oberhuber. In 2007, he was a visiting professor at the University of Hildesheim. From 2010-2015, he was the Finland Distinguished Professor at the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki (, ; UH) is a public university in Helsinki, Finland. The university was founded in Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo under the Swedish Empire, and moved to Helsinki in 1828 under the sponsorship of Alexander ...

in the Department of World Cultures where he headed the research project “Intellectual Heritage of the Ancient Near East.” From 2006-2008 and 2010-2011, he was a visiting professor at the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations at the

Aga Khan University Aga Khan University is a private research university based in Karachi, Pakistan. It is a non-profit institution and an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network. It was founded in 1983 as Pakistan's first private university. Starting in 2000, t ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

. From 2013-2017, he was chair of the “Melammu” project (an endeavor dedicated to studies on the “intellectual Heritage of Assyria and Babylonia on East and West”), which gathers together scholars with international renown. In 2019, the Getty Research Center in

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

invited him to become a Getty Scholar. Since 2020, he holds the NAWA-chair at the University of

Wrocław Wrocław is a city in southwestern Poland, and the capital of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship. It is the largest city and historical capital of the region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the Oder River in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Eu ...

where he is the head of the international project “From the Achaemenid to the Roman Rule: Empires in Contexts – the Processes of Long Lasting.” Rollinger is editor and co-editor of numerous journals and series, among which are Oriens et Occidens (Franz Steiner Verlag), Classica et Orientalia (Harrassowitz), Studies in Universal and Cultural History (Springer), Philippika (Harrassowitz), Melammu Symposia (Austrian Academy of Science), Empires Through the Ages in Global Perspective (de Gruyter), and the Ancient History Bulletin, Ancient West & East. He is a member of international research groups hosted at the

Collège de France The (), formerly known as the or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment () in France. It is located in Paris near La Sorbonne. The has been considered to be France's most ...

and the

Durham University Durham University (legally the University of Durham) is a collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university in Durham, England, founded by an Act of Parliament (UK), Act of Parliament in 1832 and incorporated by r ...

, as well as a member of the core group of the European Network for the History of Ancient Greece. He is a full member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), a corresponding member ot the

Archaeological Institute of America The Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) is North America, North America's oldest learned society and largest organization devoted to the world of archaeology. AIA professionals have carried out archaeological fieldwork around the world and ...

(AIA) and of the

German Archaeological Institute The German Archaeological Institute (, ''DAI'') is a research institute in the field of archaeology (and other related fields). The DAI is a "federal agency" under the Federal Foreign Office, Federal Foreign Office of Germany. Status, tasks and ...

(DAI), and a member of the

European Academy of Sciences and Arts The European Academy of Sciences and Arts (EASA, ) is a transnational and interdisciplinary network, connecting about 2,000 recommended scientists and artists worldwide, including 38 Nobel Prize laureates. The European Academy of Sciences and ...

. In recent years, his research has focused on the history of empires in the ancient Near East and the Classical world as well as universal history with a comparative approach. He has published over 150 articles and is editor/co-editor of over 70 volumes.

Selected publications

* Herodots Babylonischer Logos. Eine kritische Untersuchung der Glaubwürdigkeitsdiskussion an Hand ausgewählter Beispiele: Historische Parallelüberlieferung – Argumentationen – Archäologischer Befund – Konsequenzen für eine Geschichte Babylons in persischer Zeit, Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft 84, Innsbruck 1993. * Frühformen historischen Denkens. Geschichtsdenken, Ideologie und Propaganda im alten Mesopotamien am Übergang von der Ur-III zur Isin-Larsa Zeit (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 263), Münster. * Alexander und die großen Ströme. Die Flussüberquerungen im Lichte altorientalischer Pioniertechniken (Classica et Orientalia 7), Wiesbaden 2013. * Robert Rollinger and Christoph Ulf (eds.), Das Archaische Griechenland: Interne Entwicklungen – Externe Impulse, Berlin 2004. * Bruno Jacobs and Robert Rollinger (eds.), Der achaimenidische Hof / The Achaemenid Court (Classica et Orientalia 2), Wiesbaden 2010. * Giovanni Lanfranchi and Robert Rollinger (eds.), Concepts of Kingship in Antiquity. Proceedings of the European Science Foundation Preparatory Workshop Held in Padova, November 28 – December 1, 2007 (HANE/M X), Padua 2010. * Robert Rollinger and Christoph Ulf (eds.), Lag Troia in Kilikien? Der aktuelle Streit um Homers Ilias, Darmstadt 2011. * Robert Rollinger, Brigitte Truschnegg and Reinhold Bichler (eds.), Herodot und das Persische Weltreich – Herodotus and the Persian Empire (Classica et Orientalia 3) Harrassowitz-Verlag Wiesbaden 2011. * Johannes Haubold, Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, Robert Rollinger, John Steele (eds.), The World of Berossos (Classica et Orientalia 5), Wiesbaden 2013. * Michael Gehler and Robert Rollinger (eds.), Imperien in der Weltgeschichte. Epochenübergreifende und globalhistorische Vergleiche, 2 Volumes, Wiesbaden 2014. * Giovanni Battista Lanfranchi, Raija Mattila, and Robert Rollinger (eds.), Writing Neo-Assyrian History. Sources, Problems, and Approaches (State Archives of Assyria Studies 29), Penn State University Press 2019. * Kai Ruffing, Kerstin Droß-Krüpe, Sebastian Fink, Robert Rollinger (eds.), Societies at War (Melammu Symposia 10), Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press 2020. * Robert Rollinger, Julian Degen and Michael Gehler (eds.), Short-term empires in World History (Universalund kulturhistorische Studien / Studies in Universal and Cultural History), Wiesbaden: Springer 2020. * Bruno Jacobs and Robert Rollinger (eds.), A Companion to the Persian Achaemenid Empire, 2 volumes (Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World), Malden: John Wiley & Sons 2021, in press.

References

Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Robert Rollinger_english

ÖAW Mitglieder Detail
* Papers of Robert Rollinger on academia.edu
Robert Rollinger , University of Innsbruck - Academia.edu
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rollinger, Robert 1964 births Living people People from Bludenz Members of the Austrian Academy of Sciences 20th-century Austrian historians 21st-century Austrian historians Austrian Assyriologists University of Innsbruck alumni Academic staff of the University of Innsbruck 21st-century Austrian male writers 20th-century Austrian male writers Historians of Iran