From 2013-2020, Viktoria Lanz studied at the University of Innsbruck (Bachelor's degree in Classica et Orientalia and Archaeology; Master's degree in Ancient History). During her studies, she took part in several excavations and projects in Austria and gained experience on excursions to Jordan, Turkey, Greece and Italy. Since 2020, she has lived in Berlin, where, after working in the museum sector and participating in an excavation project in Iraq, she began her doctoral studies in the Department of Near Eastern Archaeology at Freie Universität.

The focus of her dissertation project is on incense burners from the 2nd and 1st millennium BC in Mesopotamia. Using iconographic and glyptic source material collected in a catalogue, she tries to identify original finds. Her master's thesis had shown that the research focus on incense burners is mainly in the Levant and the western Mediterranean, while few to no clearly identified examples from Mesopotamia have been studied. Therefore, Mesopotamian incense burners form a relatively unexplored group of objects. The aim of her dissertation project is to contribute to the research on this group of objects by looking not only at the function and use, but also at the social structures behind the objects. The planned project is therefore intended to contribute to the debate surrounding the terminology of this group of finds and also to create a complete picture of the incense burners of the "bowl on a stand" type of the 2nd and 1st millennium BC in Mesopotamia.

Her project is supervised by Prof. Dr. Dominik Bonatz and has been funded by an Elsa Neumann scholarship for doctoral students since April 2023.