Professor Rubina Raja's research on Palmyra and Greco-Roman Antiquity has earned her an award as Distinguished Lecturer by the prestigious Max Planck Society. The award is given based on a selection process by the Human Sciences Section.

Raja's lecture, entitled Unravelling urbanism through a “High Definition Archaeology” approach: A 3D historiography of concepts of the ancient city, is the first lecture in a distinguished lecture series, covering a wide range of disciplines in the human and social sciences.