Aaron M. Butts
Beyond Influence: The Connected Histories of Ethiopic and Syriac Christianity
Aaron Butts’ research and teaching focus on Christianity in the Near East, including especially Arabic, Ethiopic, and Syriac. He also has interests in the intersections and interactions of Christians with Jews and Muslims. Butts has published over one hundred items, including more than ten volumes and thirty peer-reviewed journal articles. His research has been supported by membership at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ) and by an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers. At the University of Hamburg, Butts is currently directing a five-year project entitled “BeInf – Beyond Influence: The Connected Histories of Ethiopic and Syriac Christianity”, which is funded by a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC).
Muriel Debié
Homer in Edessa. The Transfer of Classical Culture in Syriac
Muriel Debié is Professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études-PSL and a senior membre at Institut universitaire de France (IUF) in Paris. She is a specialist of Syriac studies. Her last book Alexander the Great in Syriac. From Greek Romance to Christian Apocalypses and the Qur’an (in French) is in press. The English translation of the book she co-authored with Françoise Briquel Chatonnet, Le Monde syriaque, is due at the beginning of June at Yale University Press.
Cornelia Horn
Mary and the Syriac Tradition: Shaping the Center and the Periphery of the World of Oriental Christians
Cornelia B. Horn, Ph.D. (The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, 2001) and Dr. phil. habil. (Tübingen, 2011), is Full Professor and Chair of the Department of Oriental Christian and Byzantine Studies as well as Director of the Mesrop Center for Armenian Studies at the Oriental Institute of the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg in Halle (Saale), Germany. Her research focuses on the history of religion, society, and culture in the eastern Mediterranean world and further to the East, with contributions to questions of the interactions between Christian, Islamic, and Jewish traditions, internal Christian conflicts and tensions, the history of Israel/Palestine, Christian apocrypha on Jesus and Mary, the history of asceticism and monasticism, Syriac Christianity, Georgian and Armenian Christianity in the Caucasus, as well as groundbreaking studies of children and women in Oriental Christian sources. Her recent book publications include, co-edited with Rita Stephan and Guita Hourani, “In Line with the Divine”: The Struggle for Gender Equality in Lebanon(Gender, Religion & History 1; Warwick, RI, 2015); co-edited with Sidney H. Griffith, Biblical and Qur’ānic Traditions in the Middles East (Eastern Mediterranean Texts and Contexts 2; Warwick, RI, 2016); co-authored with Robert R. Phenix Jr., The Rabbula Corpus (Leiden and Boston, 2017); co-edited with Reidar Aasgaard and Oana Maria Cojocaru, Childhood in History. Perceptions of Children in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (London and New York, 2018); co-edited with Basil Lourié, Alexey Ostrovsky, and Bernard Outtier, Armenia between Byzantium and the Orient: Celebrating the Memory of Karen Yuzbashyan (1927-2009) (Texts and Studies in Eastern Christianity 2; Leiden and Boston, 2020); and co-authored with Robert R. Phenix Jr., Strategius of Mar Saba, On the Captivity of Jerusalem by the Persians in 614 CE. The First Full English Translation of the Georgian Witness, with Selected Greek, Arabic, and Armenian Parallels (EMTC 4, GeorgST 1; St. Albans, Missouri, 2023).
Ute Possekel
Severus of Antioch and the Consolidation of Miaphysite Orthodoxy
Ute Possekel is Lecturer on Syriac at Harvard Divinity School. Her research and teaching interests focus on Syriac language and the history of Syriac-speaking communities, especially their cultural and religious expressions, their theology, and their interaction with neighboring linguistic and religious communities. Her publications include a monograph on Ephrem the Syrian and articles on diverse topics, including christology, the philosopher-theologian Bardaisan of Edessa, ancient mosaics with inscriptions, the School of Nisibis, and the Christians and pagans in Harran. Her current project is a co-authored text edition and translation of sixth-century treatises on Nativity and Epiphany, titled Thomas of Edessa’s Explanations of the Feasts: Liturgy, Learning, and Exegesis in Late Antique Persia, Oxford Early Christian Texts (forthcoming). Possekel serves as Review Editor for Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies.
Hidemi Takahashi
On the Peripheries of Syriac Studies: Syriac Christianity and Syriac Language in Contact with Others
Hidemi Takahashi is professor in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tokyo and is currently also director of the University of Tokyo Centre for Middle Eastern Studies. He began his career in Syriac studies with his research on the works of Barhebraeus. He has in more recent years been publishing in a number of other fields within Syriac studies, including Syriac Christianity in Central Asia and China and the use of Armenian Garshuni.
Jack Tannous
From Syriac into Arabic: A Historical Sketch
Jack Tannous is an Associate Professor of History and Hellenic Studies at Princeton University, where he teaches classes on late antique and medieval history. His research focuses on the Greek-, Syriac-, and Arabic-speaking Christian communities of the Middle East in these periods.
