Achaemenid Workshops (AchWorks), shall strive to revisit, reassess, and reformulate (the state of) Achaemenid scholarship. The goal of the workshops is to allow the important momentum around Achaemenid Studies. Coordinated by the Pourdavoud Institute in conjunction with AchWorks’ Organizing Board, a dozen workshops will be hosted over the coming years at leading institutions of ancient studies around the globe. The workshops aspire to become an intellectual hub for Achaemenid studies, while affording an institutional framework to foster the next generation of scholars working on the Achaemenid world.
This is particularly important at the present juncture, when the manifold fields of ancient studies are undergoing profound changes and multiple voices reporting on the ancient worlds are emerging with ever more vigor and independence. Thus, at a time when new research structures, such as Global Antiquity (UCLA), have been instituted, or grand initiatives, such as the Classical World in Context (Getty), are being conducted, the Achaemenid world empire would also have pedagogic and heuristic value for the comparative study of the ancient worlds.