Associate Professor in Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations and the Oriental Institute, received a grant from UChicago's Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society for "Signs of Writing: The Cultural, Social, and Linguistic Contexts of the World's First Writing Systems," a project with Edward Shaughnessy (the Lorraine J. and Herrlee G. Creel Distinguished Service Professor in East Asian Languages & Civilizations). He and Shaughnessy also received support from the UChicago Center in Beijing for the conference "Signs of Writing."