On 23 June 2026, the European Research Council (ERC) announced the awardees of its prestigious Advanced Grants, with Professor Mark Geller (UCL Hebrew and Jewish Studies) awarded €2.4 million to lead an ambitious international research project, BabPharmacy.

BabPharmacy will apply statistical methods from the study of ancient Chinese medicine to thousands of cuneiform medical recipes to identify which plant and mineral drugs were most trusted by ancient healers. It will aim to answer one of the most persistent questions about ancient Babylonian medicine: did any of it actually work and how can it reflect on today’s modern medicine? 

Prof. Geller was on secondment from UCL from 2010-2018, serving as Visiting Professor for the History of Knowledge at the Freie Universität Berlin. He was PI of a European Research Council Advanced Grant, BabMed - Babylonian Medicine, from 2013-2018.