Jacob Lauinger, Ph.D. (2007), University of Chicago, is Associate Professor of Assyriology at The Johns Hopkins University. His monograph, Following the Man of Yamhad: Settlement and Territory at Old Babylonian Alalah (Brill, 2015) studied the cuneiform texts from Middle Bronze Age Alalah that record the purchase or exchange of entire settlements and the socio-economic practices that these texts reflect. He is currently working on a book project on the statue of Idrimi from Late Bronze Age Alalah. Building on his work on Alalah, he has a broader interest in the use of cuneiform Akkadian in peripheral (i.e., extra-Mesopotamian) areas of the ancient Near East.