short vita

From 2018 to 2025, Prof. Dr. Markus Hilgert served as Executive Director and Secretary General of the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States (Kulturstiftung der Länder). Prior to that, from 2014 to 2018, he was Director of the Museum of the Ancient Near East at the Pergamon Museum, part of the National Museums in Berlin. Between 2007 and 2014, Hilgert held a professorship in Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Heidelberg University (Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg).

Since 2014, he has held honorary professorships at Heidelberg University, at the University of Marburg since 2015, and at Freie Universität Berlin since 2017. He has also been deeply engaged in extra mural work in the fields of science and culture, including serving on the board of the German Commission for UNESCO since 2018.

As of April 2025, Prof. Dr. Markus Hilgert is President of the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK Berlin). His term of office is five years.

Selection of scientific publications

• Cuneiform Texts from the Ur III Period in the Oriental Institute, Volume 1: Drehem Administrative Documents from the Reign of Šulgi.Oriental Institute Publications 115. Oriental Institute, Chicago 1998.
• Akkadisch in der Ur-III-Zeit. Rhema-Verlag, Münster 2002. (= Dissertation)
• Cuneiform Texts from the Ur III Period in the Oriental Institute, Volume 2: Drehem Administrative Documents from the Reign of Amar-Suena.Oriental Institute Publications 121. Oriental Institute, Chicago 2003. 
• Von „Listenwissenschaft“ und „epistemischen Dingen“. Konzeptuelle Annäherungen an altorientalische Wissenspraktiken. In: Journal for General Philosophy of Science 40, 2009, S. 277–309.
• Herausgeber: Altorientalistik im 21. Jahrhundert: Selbstverständnis, Herausforderungen, Ziele. (= Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 142). Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, Berlin 2010. 
• „Text-Anthropologie“: Die Erforschung von Materialität und Präsenz des Geschriebenen als hermeneutische Strategie, in: Markus Hilgert (Hrsg.): Altorientalistik im 21. Jahrhundert: Selbstverständnis, Herausforderungen, Ziele, (= Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 142), 2010, S. 85–124.
• Materializing Culture - Culturizing Material. On the Status, Responsibilities and Function of Cultural Property Repositories within the Framework of a „Transformative Scholarship“. Middle East – Topics & Arguments 3, 2014, S. 30–39.
• Von der ‚Ambivalenz der Dinge‘ zur Objekt-Politik. Objektepistemologien im Spannungsfeld von Wissenschaft, Gesellschaft und Politik, in: Markus Hilgert, Henrike Simon and Kerstin P. Hofmann (Eds.): Objektepistemologien. Zur Vermessung eines transdisziplinären Forschungsraums, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2018, 9–31