For Yezidi, historic images and cultural restoration
Marc Marín Webb, a Ph.D. candidate in Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, has researched the images in the Penn Museum archives and brought them back to Yezidi communities.
1 min. read
It was April 2025, during the New Year celebrations of the Yezidi (Êzîdî), an ethno-religious minority in northern Iraq. Children walked hand in hand; they tapped wicks together to share flames between candles. Fireworks lit up the sky, exploding into pinpoints of traveling light that winked and flashed and popped before dissipating in clouds of pink smoke.
To mark their wedding anniversary, two Yezidi—Khalaf and Hamdya—pose with their son Hegar in Sinjar’s old district.
(Image: Nathaniel Brunt)
Marc Marín Webb, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures in the School of Arts & Sciences, was there along with Nathaniel Brunt, a Canadian photographer and academic, both sharing in these celebrations with an offering: three open-air exhibitions of archival photographs of the Yezidi from the Penn Museum collection.
These photographs—part of a group of some 300 images from the museum’s archives—were originally taken in the 1920s and ’30s during archaeological excavations conducted by a Penn Museum team at Tepe Gawra and Tell Billa, Mesopotamian sites located near the modern twin towns of Baʿshīqa and Baḥzānī in northern Iraq. In addition to photographing archaeological processes and materials, the team also took pictures of its hosts, local shrines and monuments, and celebrations.
Marín Webb has spent years working in this part of the world. He has two master’s degrees, one in ancient Mediterranean studies and one in architecture, where he studied the conservation of an archaeological site in Iraq. At Penn, Marín Webb continued to pursue his interest in structures, studying historic preservation at the Weitzman School of Design in addition to his coursework in Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures. In 2019, he accompanied his adviser, Richard L. Zettler, Professor of Mesopotamian Archaeology, on the conservation of the Sheikh Adi shrine in the Valley of Lalish, the holiest site for the Yezidi community
Novel plant-based approach to a better, cheaper GLP-1 delivery system
Research led by Penn Dental’s Henry Daniell investigates the use of a lettuce-based, plant-encapsulated delivery platform as a new oral delivery of two GLP-1 drugs previously approved by the FDA in injectable form.
No brain, no gain: Neuronal activity enhances benefits of exercise
Research led by Penn neuroscientist J. Nicholas Betley and collaborators finds that hypothalamic neurons are essential for translating physical exertion into endurance, potentially opening the door to exercise-mimicking therapies.
In honor of Valentine's Day, and as a way of fostering community in her Shakespeare in Love course, Becky Friedman took her students to the University Club for lunch one class period. They talked about the movie "Shakespeare in Love," as part of a broader conversation on how Shakespeare's works are adapted.
In Becky Friedman’s English course Shakespeare in Love, undergraduate students analyze language, genre, and adaptation in the Bard’s plays through the lens of love.
Beating the heat: Designing cooling for bodies in motion
Dorit Aviv, director of Weitzman’s Thermal Architecture Lab, studies how humans, technology, and design intersect, paving the way for the development of novel approaches to cooling people efficiently.
