Sibylle Wentker was born in Bonn in 1967 and studied Arabic, History and Turkology at the University of Vienna, Austria, receiving a PhD in Arabic Studies in 2002 with a dissertation on the Arabic Physiologus text. From 2005 she worked as librarian and researcher at the Institute of Iranian Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences, and from 2014 she was additionally head of the Library, Archives and Collection of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In August 2018 she was appointed Director of International Relations, Fellowships and Awards, and Research Funding at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Her main research interests include the German translation of the Tarikh-e Wassaf by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, the intellectual history of European historiography concerning the ‘Orient’ (specifically Persia), Mamluk-Ilkhanid historiography and the history of Austrian-Iranian relations in the nineteenth century.