Professor Paul-Alain Beaulieu has been appointed Chair and Graduate Chair of the Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations, effective July 1, 2023 until June 30, 2028.
"Professor Beaulieu earned degrees in Law (LL.L.) and History (MA) from the Université de Montréal, and his PhD in Assyriology from Yale University in 1985. Subsequently, he held research and faculty appointments at the Yale Babylonian Collection, at Harvard’s Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and at the University of Notre Dame, before joining the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations (NMC) in 2006.
He was promoted to the rank of Professor in 2011, and in 2020 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is a Member of the American Oriental Society, the American Society of Overseas Research, and a Member of the Board of the International Association for Assyriology. He has held appointments as Visiting Scholar and Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and at Peking University.
Professor Beaulieu conducts research on the civilizations of ancient Iraq (Mesopotamia), concentrating mainly on the first millennium BC. He has written extensively on Babylonian history, religion, science, and linguistics. He is the author of several books, including Legal and Administrative Texts from the Reign of Nabonidus (Hew Haven: Yale U. Press, 2000), The Pantheon of Uruk During the Neo-Babylonian Period (Brill-Styx, 2003), and A History of Babylon (2200 BC - AD 75) (Wiley Blackwell, 2018). His current projects involve researching the cuneiform archives of the Neo- and Late Babylonian periods (8th-2nd centuries), particularly those of the cities of Ur and Uruk in southern Iraq, and the development of historical thought in ancient Mesopotamia. He has held grants from the SSHRC, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities (USA), and collaborated with projects funded by European research agencies. Professor Beaulieu has previously served in NMC as Acting Chair and Graduate Chair (2016-2017), Interim Chair and Graduate Chair (2022), and Associate Chair, Graduate (2008-2013; 2017-2018; 2020-2021)." (CPAD # 79, 2023-24)
NMC would like to thank Professor Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi for his service as Interim Chair and Interim Graduate Chair over the past two months.