Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World

Ali Akman received his Master's in Archaeology in June 2023 from Bilkent University, where he previously received his B.A. in International Relations in 2021. He also participated in the Data Science for the Public Good program, an immersive program under the leadership of the University of Virginia, The Coding Society, CADS @ TEDU, Istasyon TEDU and the United States Embassy, that engages students to work together on projects that address public challenges around critical social issues relevant in cities today. Ali's Master’s thesis, “Networks in Hittite Anatolia: A Quantitative Approach to Hittite Historical Geography”, combines Big Data techniques with philological, archaeological, and geographic data to analyze a toponym dataset of approximately 2,000 unique records, and utilizes network analysis to examine toponym co-occurrence and related geographic features. His interests include connections between Southern Anatolia, Northern Syria, and the Levant during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age; digital humanities; Anatolian archaeology; Hittitology; Assyriology; cuneiform; computational archaeology; and network analysis. His fieldwork experience includes the TKAP (Türkmen-Karahöyük Archaeological Project) Paperless Record Keeping System; Polatlı Landscape and Archaeology Open Access Database, Turkey; Laman Hittite Name Finder; Agade Archive; É.DUB.BA: School of Hittite Cuneiform; Scientific and Technological Research Institution of Turkey; and the Hethitologie-Portals Mainz (HPM) website.