Silvia Balatti is postdoctoral researcher in Ancient History at the University of Kiel (Germany). After earning a Master’s degree in Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Pavia (Italy), she carried out research on ancient Iran under the supervision of Professor Josef Wiesehöfer in the framework of the Graduate School “Human Development in Landscapes” at Kiel University. Here, she was awarded her Ph.D. in 2014 for a thesis on the ancient peoples of the Zagros Mountains. In 2015, Balatti received the Johanna Mestorf Award for outstanding dissertations in the field of human-environmental research and landscape archaeology.