Jonathan (Jonny) Russell came to Brown in July 2024. His work examines ancient Egyptian ideas of the healthy and dis-eased body, as recorded in numerous surviving therapeutic and incantation compendia, written on papyri. This contextualizes these within the socio-cultural and environmental experiences of the Nile Valley. He also explores similar notions as found in surviving cuneiform clay tablets from contemporary Mesopotamia, delving deeper into culturally transmitted concepts. This work sits at the intersection of Egyptology, Assyriology, and (medical) history and anthropology.
Currently, he is exploring food and alcohol production in both ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia through the lens of ritual and therapeutic texts, considering the impact this technology had on healing practices. He is preparing a monograph which will offer a re-examination of healing concepts and philosophies and their contextualization within a broader narrative of medical history, as well as an anthology of written sources from Pharaonic Egypt.
Jonathan studied Egyptology and Ancient History at Swansea University in Wales, the United Kingdom (BA). He holds both a Research Master’s degree and PhD in Egyptology from Leiden University in the Netherlands, the latter being funded by a scholarship graciously awarded through the competitive Open Competition in the Humanities incentive of the Dutch Scientific Research Organisation (NWO). Before coming to Brown, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for the History of Pharmacy and Medicine of the Philipps-Universität Marburg in Germany, where he refined his research into the materiality of ancient therapeutics and taught multiple classes on the history of medicine.
