Dr Sabina Franke has studied Ancient and Modern Near Eastern Languages and Cultures and Comparative Literature, gaining her master’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania and her PhD at the University of Hamburg. Sabina has taught at the University of Hamburg, the University of Salzburg and since 2010, at the Helmut-Schmidt-University in Hamburg where she offers mainly courses for the general public and non-academics. As a student she participated in several excavations in Syria and has since also has been working with history tour groups in Eastern Turkey.