Gustavo Fernandes Pedroso

I hold a BA in History from NOVA University Lisbon, and an MPhil in Cuneiform Studies from the University of Oxford. My interest in ancient Middle Eastern religion, literature, and languages led me to focus my research on the interconnection between these different topics. Therefore, my DPhil project examines the conceptions, phraseology, and poetics of divine wrath, abandonment, and reconciliation in Mesopotamian prayers and righteous sufferer poetry, as well as in selected Biblical sources, namely Job, lamentation Psalms, Lamentations, and the Songs of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah. My research aims to provide a comparative analysis of these sources based on a philological and poetic approach. This will highlight how the concepts of divine wrath, abandonment, and reconciliation are used in different texts and what they express about the original context of production and use of these sources.

My doctoral research is supervised by Dr Frances Reynolds and Dr Laura Quick. I am a member of St John’s College and my research is generously funded by an Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC DTP-St John’s College Scholarship.