Ethiopian/Eritrean Humanities Studies Scholars

Note: This page has not been updated in two years; many names are missing. I am currently looking for a better way of collecting and listing this information.

The following is a list of some of the scholars who work on Ethiopian/Eritrean history, religion, music, art, or literature (that is, have done work in the humanities). This information is posted to aid those looking for scholars to teach, visit, submit work to their edited volumes or journals, or present work at conferences or universities. Most of these scholars’ emails can be found through a simple online search, but if you absolutely can’t find it, you may email me to ask for it, using the email on this website. Scholars are listed in no particular order, outside of career stage.

Please note, no scholars are excluded from this list. The only reason a scholar of Ethiopian/Eritrean history, religion, music, art, or literature does not appear below is because they have not filled out the form. If you are a scholar in one of these fields and would like to appear on this list, please fill out this form. Scholars of development, economics, politics, anthropology, and so on are considered to be in the social sciences and excluded.

Senior Professors

Prof. Getatchew Haile

Disciplines: Literature, Religion
Broad research areas: Ethiopian literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian history: pre-1200, Ethiopian history: 1200-1500, Ethiopian history: 1600-1800
Languages: Amharic (native fluency), English (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Period: Ancient (to 1000), Middle Ages (1000-1500), Early Modern (1500-1800)
Position: Emeritus university professor at Saint John’s College
Country: From Ethiopia, lives in US
Getatchew Haile is an Ethiopian-American philologist widely considered the foremost scholar of the Ge’ez language alive today. He was acknowledged for his contributions to the field with a MacArthur Fellows Program “genius” award and the Edward Ullendorff Medal from the Council of the British Academy. He is Regents Professor Emeritus of Medieval Studies at Saint John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota, and Curator Emeritus of the Ethiopian Study Center at the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, where he began work in 1976. At HMML, he prepared catalogues of more than five thousand Ethiopian manuscripts and trained Ethiopic manuscript cataloguers in paleography, dating, and other skills. Previously he was associate professor in the Department of Ethiopian Languages and Literature, Haile Sellasie I University (now Addis Ababa University), from 1962 to 1969, and 1971 to 1974, where he taught Amharic Grammar, Amharic Literature, Ge’ez Grammar, Ge’ez Literature, Arabic Grammar, and Semitic Linguistics. He is on the advisory board of a number of journals, including Comité de lecture of Analecta Bollandiana (Journal of Christian Hagiography), Ethiopian Journal of Education, Journal of Ethiopian Studies, Northeast African Studies, Ethiopian Register (1994-2001), and Acta Aethiopica (1980–89).

Prof. Alessandro Bausi

Disciplines: Literature, Philology, Linguistics
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Amharic, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Tigrinya, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: pre-1200, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1200-1500, Ethiopian/Eritrean linguistics, Ethiopian/Eritrean manuscript studies
Specific research areas: Ethiopian (Geez) literature; Manuscript studies; Ancient Ethiopia in the late-antique context; Philology; Text-criticism; Linguistics
Periods: Ancient (1000 BCE to 1000 CE), Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE)
Languages: English (good), Amharic (good), French (good), German (good), Italian (native fluency), Tigrinya (good), Ethiopic/Ge`ez, Semitic Languages and Coptic
Position: University professor at the University of Hamburg
Country: From Italy, lives in Germany
Alessandro Bausi (PhD 1992 Naples Oriental Institute) is a philologist working on Ethiopic texts and manuscripts. Formerly Assistant (1995) and Associate Professor (2002) of Ethiopic Language and Literature, he is Professor for Ethiopian Studies at the Asien-Afrika-Institut and director of the Hiob Ludolf Centre at Universität Hamburg. He is the editor of the journal Aethiopica: International Journal of Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies and of the series Aethiopistische Forschungen. Editor of the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica (2010-2014) and Chair of the Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies networking programme (funded by the European Science Foundation 2009-2014), he is at present heading the European Research Council Advanced Grant Project TraCES: From Translation to Creation: Changes in Ethiopic Style and Lexicon from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages (2014-2019) and the long-term project of the Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Hamburg Beta Maṣāḥǝft: Die Schriftkultur des christlichen Äthiopiens und Eritreas: Eine multimediale Forschungsumgebung (2016-2040). He is a member of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at Universität Hamburg and consultant for Ethiopic and Ethiopian studies for several series and journals. He has extensively published on Ethiopian and manuscript studies. See details here: https://uni-hamburg.academia.edu/AlessandroBausi

Prof. Dagmawi Woubshet

Disciplines: Literature
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Amharic, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: twentieth century, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: twenty-first century, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: film, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: music
Specific research areas: Secular Ethiopian music; 20th cent Amharic literature; modern and contemporary Ethiopian visual art; and sexuality studies in Ethiopia
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (native fluency)
Period: Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE), Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Position: University professor at the University of Pennsylvania
Country: From Ethiopia, lives in US
A scholar of literature and visual art, Dagmawi Woubshet works at the intersections of African American, LGBTQ, and African studies. These overlapping areas of inquiry inform his scholarship and research, including his book The Calendar of Loss: Race, Sexuality, and Mourning in the Early Era of AIDS (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), and the co-edited volume Ethiopia: Literature, Art, and Culture, a special issue of Callaloo (2010). His writings have appeared in various publications including Transition, NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Aperture, The Atlantic, and African Lives: An Anthology. He is currently completing his second book, Here Be Saints: James Baldwin’s Late-Style, and the first English translation of Sebhat Gebre Egziabher’s 1966 Amharic novel, ሰባተኛው መላክ Säbatägnaw Mälak [The Seventh Angel]. Woubshet is an associate editor of Callaloo and has served on the Board of Directors of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He has been a fellow at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Ababa University, and, as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Modern Art Museum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, he curated Julie Mehretu: The Addis Show (2016). Before joining the University of Pennsylvania in 2017, Woubshet taught at Cornell University where he was named one of “The 10 Best Professors at Cornell.” He received his Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization from Harvard University and his B.A. in Political Science and History from Duke University. 

Prof. Ghirmai Negash

Disciplines: Literature
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Tigrinya, Critical Theory, Translation
Specific research areas: Postcolonial literatures from the Horn of Africa and South Africa
Languages: English (good), Amharic (good), French (good), Tigrinya (native fluency), Arabic, Dutch, Afrikaans
Period: Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE)
Position: University professor
Country: From Eritrea, lives in United States

Prof. Ghirmai Negash (PhD, University of Leiden) is a professor of English & Postcolonial Literatures and the Director of the African Studies Program at Ohio University. He is the founding-editor of the Modern African Writing Series, Ohio University Press; former founding-chair of the Department of Eritrean Languages and Literature, Asmara University; former President of PEN-Eritrea in exile; and past convener of the African Literature Association (ALA 2011). He was also a member of the ALA Executive Council; member of the Faculty Senate, and Vice-chair and Undergraduate Director of the Department of English, Ohio University.
     Negash received his PhD from the University of Leiden in 1999. His research and teaching interests include postcolonial African and world literatures, critical theory, orature, and translation. His main writings focus on the literatures and cultures of the Horn of Africa and South Africa. A multilingual writer speaking several African and European languages, he publishes in English and his native language, Tigrinya.
     He is the author and translator of several books of criticism, fiction, and poetry, including: A History of Tigrinya Literature in Eritrea: the Oral and the Written 1890-1991 (CNWS-University of Leiden, 1999); The Freedom of the Writer (Africa World Press, 2016); Who Needs a Story? (co-editor and translator with C. Cantalupo; Hidri and Africa Books Collective, 2016); At the Crossroads: Readings of the Postcolonial and the Global in African Literature and Visual Art, Lead Ed., (Africa World Press, 2014), and a translation of Gebreyesus Hailu’s novel The Conscript from Tigrinya into English (Ohio University Press, 2012). Originally written in 1927 and published in 1950, this stunning novel provides readers with an African literary response to Italian colonialism in Eritrea and Libya. Negash’s translation of the novel has been critically acclaimed for its elegance and for opening new theoretical space for the study of African-language literatures and their significance in and contribution to world literature. His latest books are Megedi Adinaa (2017) and African Liberation Theology: Intergenerational Conversations on Eritrea’s Futures (2018), co-written with Awet T. Weldemichael, Queens University, Canada.
     His articles, translations, and essays have appeared in numerous academic and popular journals and books in print and online, including in Research in African Literatures, Biography, Imbizo, Teaching Life Writing Texts (MLA, 2008), “Two Lines,” and Warscapes. 

Prof. Charles Cantalupo

Disciplines: Literature
Broad research areas: Eritrean literature and translation; African language literary translation; poetry
Period: Twentieth-Century (1900-2000), Twenty-first Century (2000-present)
Languages: English (native fluency), French (good), Italian (good)
Position: University professor at Penn State Schuylkill
Country: From United States; living in United States

Professor Charles Cantalupo is Distinguished Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and African Studies at The Pennsylvania State University.  He teaches at Penn State’s Schuylkill Campus. With funding from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations and The World Bank, he co-chaired the seven-day conference and festival, Against All Odds: African Languages and Literatures into the 21st Century in Asmara, Eritrea, in January 2000. Writer and director of the documentary, Against All Odds (2007), which chronicles the event, he is a co-author – with Kassahun Checole, Mbulelo Mzmane, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and Zemhret Yohannes – of the historic “Asmara Declaration on African Languages and Literatures.”  His translations include three books of poetry from Eritrea:  We Have Our Voice:  Selected Poetry of Reesom Haile (Red Sea Press, 2000), We Invented the Wheel (Red Sea Press, 2002), and, with Ghirmai Negash, Who Needs a Story? Contemporary Eritrean Poetry in Tigrinya, Tigre and Arabic (Hdri Publishers, 2006).  His monograph, War and Peace in Contemporary Eritrean Poetry (Mkuki na Nyota, 2009) analyzes the poetry in Who Needs a Story? Many of his translations of Eritrean poetry have been translated into other languages. His memoir, Joining Africa – From Anthills to Asmara (Michigan State University Press, 2012), is a story of poets and poetry in Africa, particularly in Eritrea. His book, Non-Native Speaker: Selected and Sundry Essays (Africa World Press, 2018) spans twenty-five years of his writing on African literature.  He has five books of poetry, including The Woodstock Sandal (Africa World Press, forthcoming), Where War Was (Mkuki na Nyota, 2015), Light the Lights (Red Sea Press, 2004), Anima/l Woman and Other Spirits (Spectacular Diseases, 1996) and The Art of Hope (Notre Dame, 1985).  He is also the author of two edited collections of essays, The World of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: Texts and Contexts (Africa World Press, 1995), and his first book was A Literary Leviathan:  Thomas Hobbes’s Masterpiece of Language (Bucknell University Press, 1991).  His poetry, translations, and essays appear in a wide range of print and online journals.

Prof. Taye Assefa

Disciplines: Literature
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Amharic, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature in European languages
Specific research areas: Modern literature in Amharic, English and French, with emphasis on the novel.
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (native fluency), French (good), Oromo (good)
Period: Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE), Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Position: Lecturer at Addis Ababa University
Country: From Ethiopia, lives in Ethiopia
Taye Assefa is a literary scholar who has written extensively on Amharic literature [and is widely acknowledged as the foremost authority on Amharic literature]. He has been Associate Professor at Addis Ababa University as a regular staff member until 1991 and from 2011 to 2017, teaching graduate courses on a part-time basis. He has also worked as a member of the senior management at the Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa-OSSREA (based in Addis Ababa) and Association of African Universities (based in Dakar). He is now the Deputy Executive Director of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences.

Prof. Mohammed Hassen Ali

Disciplines: History
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean history
Specific research areas: Ethiopian history with special emphasis on Oromo history
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (native fluency), Oromo (native fluency)
Period: Ethiopian/Eritrean history 1300-1800
Position: Emeritus Associate Professor at Georgia State University, Atlanta
Country: From Ethiopia, lives in United States
Prof. Mohammed Hasssen (PhD, University of London SOAS) taught at Atlanta University and Hunter College in the City of New York from 1985 to 1991. From 1992-2017, he taught at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He authored two books, edited with his colleagues four others, and published many articles and book chapters.

Prof. Kay Kaufman Shelemay  

Disciplines: Music
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean art: music, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural history, Ethiopian/Eritrean ethnohistory  or historical anthropology, Ethiopian/Eritrean diaspora studies
Specific research areas: ethnomusicology
Periods: native fluency), Amharic (good), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Position: University professor or lecturer Harvard University
Country: From United States, living in United States: East Coast
Degree: PhD, University of Michigan

The G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music and of African and African Studies at Harvard, Shelemay has published numerous books and editions in Ethiopian studies as well as many articles on Ethiopian music and culture. Major publications include Music Ritual and Falasha History (1986, 1989; winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award and Prize of the International Musicological Society); A Song of Longing. An Ethiopian Journey (1991); the three-volume Ethiopian Christian Liturgical Chant. An Anthology (1994, 1995, 1997; with Peter Jeffery); and Creating the Ethiopian Diaspora (2015; with Steven Kaplan, first published as a special double volume of Diaspora. A Journal of Transnational Studies in (2006) 2011) Shelemay is currently completing a monograph on Ethiopian musicians who migrated to the United States.  See her webpage.

Prof. Loren Stuckenbruck

Disciplines: Religion
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: pre-1200, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1200-1500, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1600-1800, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1800-1900, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural history, Ethiopian/Eritrean manuscript studies
Specific Research Areas: Jewish traditions preserved in Ge’ez, Bible in Ge’ez, Tigrinya
Periods: Ancient (to 1000), Middle Ages (1000-1500)
Languages: English (native fluency), French (good), German (native fluency), Italian (good), Ethiopic/Ge`ez Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Position: University professor at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Country: From US and Germany, lives in Germany
Loren Stuckenbruck is a historian of early Christianity and Second Temple Judaism and is professor of New Testament in the Protestant Faculty of Theology and Cultural Studies Faculty, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He has published many books and over 140 articles, with a focus on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Enoch literature, other Jewish sapiential and apocalyptic writings, and the literature of the New Testament. His writing focuses on evil in the New Testament (the Gospels, Paul, and the Book of Revelation), the Aramaic documents of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a commentary on the Enochic Book of Watchers (Anchor Bible, Yale University Press), canon in the context of Judaism and a broad range of Christian traditions, and on text-critical work on the early Enoch literature preserved primarily in Aramaic, Greek and Ethiopic (Ge’ez). Stuckenbruck has sat on numerous editorial boards for international academic journals, including Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, Journal of Biblical Literature, New Testament Studies, Henoch, Zeitschrift für die Althebraistik, Dead Sea Discoveries, and Journal for the Study of Judaism. He did a BA in biblical studies and Greek at Milligan College in Tennessee (B.A.); M. Div. and Ph.D. at Princeton Theological Seminary. He taught at Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel, was B. F. Westcott Chair in Biblical Studies at Durham University UK, xame to LMU in 2012 after being Richard Dearborn Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary. https://www.nt2.evtheol.uni-muenchen.de/index.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loren_Stuckenbruck

Prof. Claire Bosc-Tiessé

Disciplines: History, Art
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean art: medieval (1200-1500), Ethiopian/Eritrean art: early modern (1500-1900), Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1200-1500, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1600-1800, Ethiopian/Eritrean manuscript studies
Specific research areas: Rock-hewn churches, Lalibela, Icons, Materials of Paintings, Writing of history
Languages: English (good), French (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Position: University professor at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Period: Early Modern (1500-1800 CE)
Position: University lecturer
Country: From France, lives in France

Prof. Samantha Kelly

Disciplines:History
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1200-1500, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1600-1800
Specific research areas: Ethiopia-Europe relations
Languages: English (native fluency), French (good), Italian (good), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Period: Middle Ages (1000-1500), Early Modern (1500-1800)
Position: University professor at Rutgers University, New Brunswick
Country: From US, lives in US

Prof. Giorgio Banti

Disciplines: Literature, Linguistics
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Oromo, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in other African languages, Ethiopian/Eritrean linguistics Literature/folklore in Somali; Literature/folklore in Harari; Literature/folklore in Saho
Specific research areas: Cushitic languages and literatures (especially Somali, Saho and Oromo); Cushitic historical linguistics; Old Harari language and literature; Nara language and literature; Northern East Sudanic historical linguistics; Old Indic and Ancient Greek syntax; linguistic typology; information structure and related phenomena; Ajami writing in the Horn of Africa; anthropological linguistics, theory of oral literatures and comparative poetry; lexicography and language development.
Period: Pre-history (pre-1000 BCE), Ancient (1000 BCE to 1000 CE), Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE), Early Modern (1500-1800 CE), Nineteenth Century (1800-1900 CE), Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE), Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Languages: English (good), French (good), German (good), Italian (native fluency), Somali Position: University professor at University of Naples “L’Orientale”, Department of Asia Africa and the Mediterranean
Country: From Italy, lives in Italy
Giorgio Banti has been full professor at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” since 1997. He teaches General and Historical Linguistics there and, since 2009, also Somali Language and Literature. Since November 2014, he also is Vice-Rector of that University. He has also taught in several other Universities outside his country, such as those of Hamburg, Bayreuth, Zurich, Addis Ababa, Djibouti, and the former National University of Somalia in Mogadishu. He has been several times to the Somali-speaking countries of the Horn of Africa, and to Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Northern Sudan for fieldwork in linguistics, oral literatures, and Ajami manuscripts and publications since 1979. His degrees are from University of Roma “La Sapienza”. For more information, see his web page.

Prof. Jon Abbink

Disciplines:History, Anthropology
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean ethnography/anthropology, Ethiopian/Eritrean legal studies, Ethiopian/Eritrean environmental studies (ethno-ecology), Ethiopian/Eritrean /folklore, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: early modern (1500-1900), Ethiopian/Eritrean art: twentieth century, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: twenty-first century, Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1200-1500, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1600-1800, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1800-1900, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1900-1950, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1951-1974, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1974-1992, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1993 to present
Languages: English (good), Amharic (good), French (good), German (good), Italian (good), Hebrew (good), Dutch (native fluency)
Period: Nineteenth Century (1800-1900 CE), Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE), Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Position: University professor at Leiden University
Country: From The Netherlands, lives in The Netherlands

Prof. Peri Klemm

Disciplines: History, Art History
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Oromo, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: early modern (1500-1900), Ethiopian/Eritrean art: twentieth century, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: twenty-first century, Ethiopian/Eritrean philosophy, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1800-1900, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1900-1950, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1951-1974, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1974-1992, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1993 to present
Languages: English (native fluency)
Period: Nineteenth Century (1800-1900), Twentieth-Century (1900-2000), Twenty-first Century (2000-present)
Position: University professor at California State University Northridge
Country: From US, lives in US
Peri M. Klemm of California State University Northridge, is a professor of African, Oceanic, and Native American art history. Her courses address the cultural context of non-Western arts and the receptions and display of non-Western art in the West. Her research focus on identity, dress, and the body in Oromia. She was recently elected to serve as the President of the Arts Council of the African Studies Association in 2019. In 2015 she received a fellowship from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create African art history content for Smarthistory at Khan Academy. She spent Summer 2015 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Newark Museum, the Smithsonian, and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology recording audio conversations around 70 works of art. The completed videos will be free and available in several languages to learners around the world. Peri is currently an editor for African Arts at Khan Academy and the journal African Arts.

Prof. Verena Böll

Disciplines: Literature, History, Religion
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Amharic, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature in European languages, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: film, Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1600-1800, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1993 to present, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural anthropology, Ethiopian/Eritrean international/world relations
Specific research areas: Ethiopian-Orthodox Täwahedo Church, Liturgy, Gender, Mariology, Christian Orient
Languages: English (good), Amharic (good), French (good), German (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez, Portuguese
Period: Early Modern (1500-1800 CE), Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE), Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Position: Scholar at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
Country: From Germany,lives in Germany

Prof. Marina de Regt

Disciplines: Anthropology
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural anthropology
Specific research areas: gender and migration
Languages: English (good), Arabic, Dutch
Periods: Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE), Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Position: University professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Country: From the Netherlands, lives in the Netherlands
Marina de Regt is Assistant Professor at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of VU University Amsterdam. In 2003 she obtained her PhD at the University of Amsterdam for her dissertation on health workers in Yemen. Her main research interests are gender, labour and migration in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. She is particularly interested in transnational relations between Yemen and Ethiopia. Marina’s post-doctoral research on domestic workers in Yemen focused on Ethiopian and Somali domestic workers. In 2007 she co-produced a documentary based on her post-doctoral work entitled: Young and Invisible: African Domestic Workers in Yemen (Arda Nederveen Visual Productions). From 2014-2016 Marina did research about adolescent girls’ migration in Ethiopia as part of the project “Time to Look at Girls”, funded by the Swiss Network for Development Studies (SNIS).

Prof. Isabelle A. Zaugg

Disciplines: Philology
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean art: twenty-first century, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: film, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1974-1992, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1993 to present
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (good), Italian (good)
Specific research areas: The digitization of the Ethiopic script (Feedel) and digital support and use of Ethiopian and Eritrean languages
Period: Twentieth-Century (1900-2000), Twenty-first Century (2000-present)
Position: Postdoc at Columbia University
Country: From US, lives in US and Ethiopia
Isabelle A. Zaugg’s research interests revolve around language & culture, media, and digital technologies in the global public sphere. Her dissertation entitled “”Digitizing Ethiopic: Coding for Linguistic Continuity in the Face of Digital Extinction”” investigates the relationship between digitally-disadvantaged languages and patterns of mass extinction of language diversity. Her dissertation approaches global concerns through a case study focused on the Ethiopian and Eritrean languages that utilize the Ethiopic script. It addresses the extent to which the script and its languages are supported in the digital sphere, including tracing the history of its inclusion in Unicode. It concludes with policy, governance, and advocacy recommendations to better support digitally-disadvantaged languages, in turn supporting their long-term survival. Zaugg earned a PhD in Communication from American University in Washington, D.C. in 2017. She earned an MA in Film & Video from American University in 2013 and a BA in Art Semiotics from Brown University in 2006. She was a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellow to Ethiopia in 2016-2017 and a Fulbright Student Fellow to Ethiopia in 2012-2013, teaching a filmmaking course to students at Addis Ababa University. She began her scholarly engagement with Ethiopia as a study-abroad student at Addis Ababa University in 2004-2005. She is currently a Mellon-Sawyer Seminar Postdoctoral Fellow in “”Global Language Justice”” at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University. She’s an alumna of the United World College of the Adriatic, and was born and raised in the San Luis Valley of Southern Colorado.

Dr. Laura Bisaillon

Discipline: Sociology
Broad Research Areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural history, Ethiopian/Eritrean history of international/world relations, Horn of Africa history, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural anthropology
Specific Research Areas: Ethiopia/Eritrea-Eastern Europe relations during Communism (i.e., official policy, everyday practice, health policy, reproductive policy; implications of these relations in daily life, accessed through ethnographic and archival fieldwork).
Period: Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE)
Language: English (native fluency), French (native fluency)
Profession: University professor, University of Toronto (Scarborough and St. George campuses)
Country: From Canada, lives in Canada

Laura Bisaillon has lived, worked, and researched in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Eritrea from 2004 to the present. Her PhD is from the University of Ottawa and she teaches at the University of Toronto. In partnership with sociocultural Dr. Lorena Anton of the University of Bucharest, Dr. Bisaillon  is leading a project using social sciences and humanities scholarship that asks questions about the exchange of people and ideas between Eastern Europe and the Horn of Africa during the 1970s and 1980s.  The first round of ethnographic and archival fieldwork was carried out in Romania in 2018. While the specific focus is, at this point, on Romania and Ethiopia/Eritrea, they are embedded in communities of scholarship involving larger Eastern European and former communist geographies. Dr. Anton and Bisaillon encourage colleagues, whose interests coincide, broadly, with the exploration of exchanges in higher education between Eastern Europe and the Horn of Africa, to contact them. For additional information, Drs. Anton and Bisaillon refer colleagues to online sources:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/scholarlysocialisms/
https://utsc.utoronto.ca/news-events/news/unique-project-explores-social-and-political-lives-ethiopian-students-communist-romania
https://lemetropolitain.com/les-liens-europe-de-lest-afrique-dans-les-annees-1970-80/.
https://play.library.utoronto.ca/kUWI5IMBS1Cu

Prof. Anaïs Wion

Disciplines: History
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1200-1500, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1600-1800, Ethiopian/Eritrean manuscript studies
Specific research areas: Land tenure, Aksum, political history, social history, economic history
Periods: Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE), Early Modern (1500-1800 CE)
Languages: English (good), French (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Position:University professor or lecturer, Centre National de la recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Institut des Mondes Africains (IMAF)
Country: From France, lives in France
Anaïs Wion is a historian, a specialist on Christian Ethiopia during the modern period (15th-early 19th century). She received her PhD at the Université Paris-1 Sorbonne and has been a research fellow at the CNRS since 2007, presently at the Institut des Mondes Africains (UMR 8171). For more information, see her web page. 

Prof. Stefan Weninger

Disciplines: Philology, Linguistics
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean linguistics, Ethiopian/Eritrean manuscript studies, Ethiopian/Eritrean epigraphy
Specific research areas: Ge’ez language
Periods:  Pre-history (pre-1000 BCE), Ancient (1000 BCE to 1000 CE), Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE)
Languages:  English (good), German (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Position:  University professor or lecturer
Degree:  PhD
Degree from:  University of Marburg (Germany)
Country from:  Germany
Country in:  Germany       Institution at:     Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Germany)
Website in:  https://www.uni-marburg.de/de/cnms/semitistik/fachgebiet/personen/personenseite-stefan-weninger
Bio:  Stefan Weninger is a German Semitist. He received his training at the University of Munich (PhD 1991, Habilitation 1997). He is full professor at Philipps-Universtität Marburg since 2001. He served as a co-editor of the journal Aethiopica, he is the German delegate in the International Organising Committee of the International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, he is co-editor for Semitic Studies at Orientalistische Literaturzeitung, and Vice-President of the German Oriental Society (DMG). His research interests are Geez philology and linguistics, historical-comparative Semitic linguistics, Classical Arabic literature, Epigraphic South Arabian, Christian Oriental Studies.

Prof. Curt Niccum

Disciplines: Religion
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic
Specific research areas: Textual Criticism of the Bible (Ethiopian Canon)
Languages: English (native fluency), French (good), German (good), Ethiopic/Ge`ez, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Coptic
Period: Ancient (to 1000)
Position: University professor at Abilene Christian University
Country: From US, lives in US

Prof.  Hagar Salamon 

Disciplines: Anthropology, Folklore  
Broad research areas:Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology, Ethiopian/Eritrean ethnohistory  or historical anthropology, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural anthropology, Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews) everyday life and folklore in Ethiopia and Israel   
Specific research areas: Beta Israel culture and folklore, Ethiopian culture in transition    
Periods: Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE), Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)          
Languages:English (native fluency), Hebrew (native fluency)  
Position:University professor or lecturer, Folklore and Folk Culture Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem              
Country: From Israel, lives in Israel    
PhD        The Hebrew University of Jerusalem                        

Hagar Salamon is Max and Margarethe Grunwald Chair in Folklore, Head of the Graduate Program for Folklore and Folk Culture Studies and Research Fellow at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on cultural and identity issues relating to the Ethiopian Jews, present day Israeli folklore both in public and private spheres, life stories and humoristic narratives as well as women’s folk creativity. Since 2004, she is co-editor of the Jewish folklore journal Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore.

Prof. Witold Witakowski

Discipline: Literature, Philology, Religion
Broad Research Areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology, Ethiopian/Eritrean manuscript studies
Specific Research Areas: Ge`ez historiography; Ge`ez apocryphal literature
Periods: Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE), Early Modern (1500-1800 CE)
Languages: English (good), French (good), German (good), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Profession: Professor emeritus, Uppsala University, Dept. of Linguistic and Philology, Sweden
Country: From Poland; Sweden; lives in Sweden

Prof. Witold Witakowski, now partly retired, received his MA from Warsaw Univ., Poland, and his PhD from Uppsala Univ., Sweden. His interest in Abyssinian (this is the term that covers both Classical Ethiopia and Pre-Modern Ethiopia as well as Eritrea) civilization, as well as his basic education in Ge’ez language, history and literature comes from his education at Warsaw University, Poland, in the early 1970s. After his PhD in Syrology (in Sweden), he returned to Ethiopological research topics where he found a fertile area of interests in comparative cultural influences between the Jewish civilization and Christian Syriac, on one side, and Ethiopian, on the other. More particular topics that he delved into are: Ethiopic apocryphal literature, monasticism and monastic literature, and historiography.

Prof.  Michael Knibb

Disciplines: Literature
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean manuscript studies
Specific research areas: Ge’ez Bible translations
Periods:  Ancient (1000 BCE to 1000 CE), Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE), Early Modern (1500-1800 CE)
Languages:  English (native fluency), French (good), German (good), Italian (good), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Position:  Emeritus Professor
Degree:  PhD
Degree from:  Home
Country from:  United Kingdom
Country in:  United Kingdom         Institution at:     University of London
Website in: 
Bio:  Born in 1938, he was educated in London, New York and Oxford and spent his career at King’s College London, where he became Professor Of Old Testament Studies. He has published widely in the fields of Second Temple Judaism and of Ethiopic Studies, specifically the translation of the Bible into Ge”ez.

Professors

Prof. Hagos Abrha

Disciplines: Philology, Literature and folklore, Linguistics
Broad research areas:Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology, Ethiopian/Eritrean linguistics, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural anthropology, Ethiopian/Eritrean manuscript studies
Specific research areas: Ge’ez Hagiography

Periods: Ancient (to 1000), Middle Ages (1000-1500), Early Modern (1500-1800 CE)       
Languages: English (good), Amharic (native fluency), Tigrinya (native fluency), Tigrinya (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Position: University professor at Mekelle University; currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hamburg
Country: From Ethiopia, lives in Germany

Hagos Abrha is an Ethiopian philologist who is the founder and director of St. Yared Center for Ethiopian Philology and Manuscript Studies in Mekelle University (Ethiopia) where he collected and digitized many Ge’ez manuscripts from different monasteries of Northern Ethiopia. Among other English courses, he has been teaching Ge’ez Grammar in the University from 2010 to 2018 years.  His PhD research at Addis Ababa Universisty was on the manuscripts of hagiography of Yəm‘atta (one of the Nine Saints), and the title of his dissertation was HA Critical Edition of Gadla Yematta (with translation), Using Neo-Lachmmanian Cladistic Method and A Textual Analysis. Hagos is also active in researche related to culture, language, and literature: he published two books of poetry (in Amharic and Tigrigna); he also translated The Inquiries of Zär’a Ya’qob the philosopher and His Disciple Wäldä Ḥiwot into Tigrigna (from Ge’ez). He urged Hamburg University to begin the “Summer School for Ethiopian and Eritrean Manuscript Studies,” some of which his center hosted in Mekelle. He is also a think tank member of the “Global Humanities Curriculum” at the Harvard University Mahindra Center. In 2019, he started his postdoctoral fellowship at Hamburg University on “Non-Codex Ge’ez Manuscripts of Tigray: Archiving and Usage.”  Born in Tigray/Ethiopia in 1985, he completed his BA degree in English as Foreign Language and Literature at Jimma University; his MA in Geez Philology at Addis Ababa University; and his PhD in Geez Philology at Addis Ababa University.  He has digitized many manuscripts from Gonder and Tigray.

Prof. Elleni Centime Zeleke

Disciplines: Political Theory, Critical Theory
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean history 1900 to present, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural history, Ethiopian/Eritrean history of international/world relations
Specific research areas: State formation, student movements, political-economy
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (good)
Period: Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE), Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Position: University professor
Country: From Ethiopia and Canada, lives in the United States (eastern)
Elleni Centime Zeleke (PhD York University) is an assistant professor at Columbia University. She is completing a book manuscript entitled Writing Revolution in Ethiopia: Knowledge Production and Social Change, 1964-2016. Zeleke has also recently published article in the Journal of North East African Studies that examines the 2005 election crises in Ethiopia through the debates of the Ethiopian student movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s. See her webpage.

Prof. Teodros Kiros

Disciplines: Literature, Philosophy
Broad research areas: African philosophy
Specific research areas: Moral philosophy
Periods: Pre-history (pre-1000 BCE), Ancient (1000 BCE to 1000 CE), Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE), Early Modern (1500-1800 CE), Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE)
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (native fluency), French (good), German (good), Italian (good), Tigrinya (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Position: University professor, Berklee College of Music
Country: From Ethiopia; lives in United States: East Coast

Considered one of the leading authorities on moral philosophy and African philosophy, Prof. Teodros is the author of Towards the Construction of Political Action: Moral Philosophy and Development (1992); Self-Construction and The Formation of Human Values: Truth, Language and Desire (Praeger 1999); Explorations in African Political Thought (ed. vol., Routledge);Multiculturalism (Routledge); Zara Yacob: Rationality of the Human Heart (Red Sea Press); Philosophical Essays (Red Sea Press);Ethiopian Discourse (Red Sea Press); Hirut and Hailu and Other Short Stories (Red Sea Press);Cambridge Days (Red Sea Press);Self-Definition: A Philosophical Inquiry from The Global South and Global North (Lexington Books 2019). He has been a nonresident Dubois Fellow at Harvard University for the past twenty years; nominated three times for the Distinguished Faculty award; a producer and host of the internationally acclaimed television program African Ascent; and an essayist for leading websites and newspapers.

Prof. Hamza Zafer

Disciplines:Literature, History, Philology
Broad research areas: Ethiopian literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian art: ancient (pre-1200), Ethiopian philosophy, Ethiopian religion and theology, Ethiopian history: pre-1200
Specific research areas: Ethiopic Influences on the Quran and Early Islam
Period: Ancient (to 1000), Middle Ages (1000-1500)
Languages: English (native fluency), French (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez, Arabic, Persian, Urdu
Position: University professor at the University of Washington
Country: From Pakistan, lives in US
Hamza Zafer is an Assistant Professor of early Islam and Classical Arabic in the Deparment of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Comparative Religion, and Jewish Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. His research focuses on the Quran’s polemical engagements with Jewish communities in Arabia, and the portrayal of these communities in the earliest Muslim historical and exegetical writings up to the 9th century. His doctoral dissertation examines the emergence and expression of a religio-communal ideology among early Muslims, as it co-opts, appropriates and subverts the legacy of the biblical “Children of Israel”.

Prof. Aaron Butts

Disciplines: Literature, History, Philology, Religion
Broad research areas: Ethiopian literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian religion and theology, Ethiopian history: pre-1200, Ethiopian history: 1200-1500
Specific research areas: Ge’ez language and literature, history of Ethiopian Christianity, history of Axum
Languages: English (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez, Syriac, Arabic, Old South Arabian, Greek, etc.
Period: Ancient (to 1000), Middle Ages (1000-1500)
Position: University professor at Catholic University
Country: From US, lives in US
Aaron Michael Butts (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2013) joined the Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures at The Catholic University of America in the fall of 2014 as an assistant professor after having served as Lector (2010-2013) and then Senior Lector (2013-2014) at Yale University. His research is focused on the languages, literatures, and history of Christianity in the Near East, especially Arabic, Ethiopic, and Syriac. At CUA, he serves on the Executive Committee for both the Center for the Study of Early Christianity and the Center for Medieval and Byzantine Studies. Dr. Butts serves on the editorial board of Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies, and he is associate editor, as well as a member of the editorial board, for Aramaic Studies. Within Ethiopic studies, he is currently working on a number of projects, including a new teaching grammar of Ethiopic, entitled Ethiopic in 20 Lessons, to be published, along with his Ethiopic Paradigms, with Peeters Press; catalogues of the Ethiopic collections at Duke University (together with Lucas Van Rompay) and at The Catholic University of America (together with a team of scholars); a monograph-length study of the ‘conversions’ of Ethiopia; several inter-related studies of the Ethiopic reception of the famous Syriac poet Jacob of Serugh (together with Ted Erho); and editions of a number of Ethiopic texts, including especially exegetical texts. To see his publications, go to his Academia page.

Prof.  Wolbert G. C. Smidt

Disciplines: Ethnohistory, Cultural history, Social Anthropology
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1200-1500; Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1600-1800; Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1800-1900; Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1900-1950; Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1951-1974; Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1974-1992; Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1993 to present; Ethiopian/Eritrean ethnohistory or historical anthropology; Ethiopian/Eritrean epistolography; Ethiopian/Eritrean epigraphy
Specific research areas: Oral tradition studies, Ethiopian writing / epistolography (Amharic, Tigrinya, Oromo), Nineteenth-century precolonial history of Northeastern Africa, modern history of Northeastern Africa, History and Culture of Territoriality, Oral tradition studies, Visual anthropology
Languages: Tigrinya (good), English (good), French (good), German (native fluency), Amharic and other European languages (different levels)
Period: Ancient (to 1000), Middle Ages (1000-1500), Early Modern (1500-1800), Modern (1800-now)
Position: Post-doc Researcher at Jena University, Germany; Full Professor in Ethnohistory at the Department of Anthropology (adjunct), Mekelle University, Ethiopia
Country: From Germany, lives in Ethiopia

Dr. Wolbert Smidt is an ethnohistorian serving as a post-doc at Jena University in Germany, in their Seminar of Middle Eastern Studies, and is an adjunct member of the Department of Anthropology at Mekelle University, Ethiopia, as a full professor. He is working as a researcher for the Yeha Project of Jena University, documenting ancient oral traditions in Tigray, and in addition advising PhD students at the Mekelle University PhD programmes “Anthropology” and “History and Cultural Studies.” He is working on a wide range of historical and cultural research projects in Northeastern Africa, with focus on the historical region of Tigray and pre-modern systems of rule and socio-political self-organisation of societies. He worked in private and state archives in a dozen countries in Europe and Africa and did anthropological field research in different regions of Northeastern Africa, especially Tigray, Afar and Bilen, with additional research on Oromo, Gojjam Amhara and highland Muslim societies. He was awarded a series of guest professorships and scholarships in Paris (EHESS), Berlin (ZMO), Gotha (FZG), Rome (Sapienza), Jerusalem (Hebrew University), Osaka (Minpaku), Pavia (CICOPS), Munich (Institute of Social Anthropology), and was elected and appointed member of distinct academic societies and institutes, such as the German Archaeological Institute (corresponding member), Société des africanistes, Paris, Centre français des études éthiopiennes, Addis Abeba (cfee) and the Research Centre Gotha (FZG) of Erfurt University, and from 2016 to 2019 served as the German director of the historical-anthropological research project on historical cartography “Ethiomap” (this German-French-Ethiopian research project continues on a lower scale). He was an Assistant Editor of the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica at Hamburg University, Hiob Ludolf Centre of Ethiopian Studies (1999-2010), co-organizer of several International Conferences of Ethiopian Studies (Hamburg 2003, Dire Dawa 2012, Warsaw 2015, Mekelle 2018) and has authored about 200 peer-reviewed encyclopedia articles, several monographs and numerous articles in academic reviews and books. He is on the advisory board of a number of journals, including Annales d’Ethiopie, Ityopis, POUNT, and of several academic book series.

Dr. Christine Sciacca

Disciplines: Art
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean art: ancient (pre-1200), Ethiopian/Eritrean art: medieval (1200-1500), Ethiopian/Eritrean art: early modern (1500-1900), Ethiopian/Eritrean art: twentieth century, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: twenty-first century, Ethiopian/Eritrean manuscript studies
Specific research areas: Ethiopian painting, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, devotional objects.
Languages: English (native fluency), German (native fluency), Italian (native fluency)
Period: Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE)
Position: Curator at Walters Art Museum
Country: From US, lives in US
Christine Sciacca is Associate Curator of European Art, 300-1400 CE at the Walters Art Museum. She received her Ph.D., M.Phil., and M.A. in Art History from Columbia University, and a B.A. in Art History from Cornell University. Christine was a curator of illuminated manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum for ten years, and she has worked several other museums, including The Cloisters Museum and The British Library. Her book publications include, Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance: Painting and Illumination, 1300-1350, Building the Medieval World, and Illuminating Women in the Medieval World. In 2018 she was developing and exhibition on the art of Ethiopia at the Walters Art Museum.

Prof. William Gerard Zimmerle

Disciplines: History, Art, Religion, Anthropology
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean art: ancient (pre-1200), Ethiopian/Eritrean art: medieval (1200-1500), Ethiopian/Eritrean history: pre-1200, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1200-1500, Ethiopian/Eritrean historical archaeology, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural anthropology
Specific research areas: Rock Art; Ethnoarchaeology: Handicraft Production in Ethiopia
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (good), German (good), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Period: Ancient (1000 BCE to 1000 CE), Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE)
Position: University professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University
Country: From US, lives in US
William Zimmerle completed his PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania in 2014, where he specialized in Archaeology and ancient Semitic languages. At Penn, he conducted extensive research on the Arabian incense trade from its earliest beginnings through the early Islamic period in the Near East Section at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. In addition to his doctoral degree, he earned a Masters degree in Comparative Religions and Semitic languages from Harvard University. He holds a number of graduate certificates including an advanced certificate in African Studies (Ethiopic Languages and Literature: Amharic) from Penn’s Center for African Studies where he was a US State Department FLAS fellow, and a post-graduate certificate in Intellectual Property Law from the University of Edinburgh School of Law in the United Kingdom. In 2018 he is an Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities in the School of Humanities at Fairleigh Dickinson University in northern NJ with a research appointment in Heritage Tourism in the School of Hospitality and Tourism. His academic research interests include Pre-Islamic and Islamic material culture of the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa including both Ethiopia and Somaliland; incense burners, organic residue analysis, and the question of the frankincense trade both overland and via maritime trade; intellectual property and cultural heritage law in the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa; museum studies; archaeological tourism and sustainable development; epigraphic South Arabian languages; the anthropology of scent and ritual studies; and all aspects of Digital Humanities including data visualization, GIS and Remote Sensing, and 3D imaging of material culture for heritage preservation. His current research projects involve both prehistoric rock art and modern-day frankincense cultivation and handicraft production in multiple countries including the Sultanate of Oman, Ethiopia, and Somaliland. He is also the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards including the Sylvan C. and Pamela Coleman Curatorial Research Fellow in the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan; the Samuel H. Kress Fellow in the History of Art at the American Center of Oriental Research-Amman, Jordan; the Terrace Research Associate in Egyptian Art in the Department of Art of the Ancient World at the Museum of Fine Arts-Boston; Visiting Scholar in Ethiopic studies at Princeton Theological Seminary-Princeton; the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center Research Fellow in Washington, DC-Muscat; the American Institute of Yemeni Studies Research Fellow; the American Institute of Archaeology/Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Exchange Fellow in the Oriental Department-Berlin; and the United States Fulbright Commission Post-Doctoral Fellow in Dhofar, the Sultanate of Oman.

Prof. Robert Holmstedt

Disciplines: Philology
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic
Specific research areas: Ge’ez linguistics (historical, comparative)
Languages: English (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Period: Ancient (to 1000)
Position: University professor at University of Toronto
Country: From US, lives in Canada
Robert D. Holmstedt (MA, PhD University of Wisconsin-Madison) is a professor in the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto. His teaching and research focuses on philological and linguistic analysis of ancient West Semitic texts and languages, especially Hebrew, Ugaritic, and Ge’ez.

Prof. Matteo Salvadore

Disciplines: History
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1200-1500, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1600-1800, Ethiopian/Eritrean international/world relations
Specific research areas: Early modern Ethiopian diaspora; early modern Ethiopian-European relations
Languages: English (native fluency), French (good), Italian (native fluency)
Period: Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE), Early Modern (1500-1800 CE)
Position: University professor at American University of Sharjah
Country: From Italy, lives in United Arab Emirates
Matteo Salvadore is a broadly trained Africanist and world historian, with a research interest in the Horn of Africa and its diaspora. He published his first book, The African Prester John and the Birth of Ethiopian-European Relations, 1402-1555 in Routledge’s Transculturalisms series. Over the years he contributed articles to the Journal of World History, Northeast African Studies, and the Journal of African History, as well as several entries to Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, the Oxford Dictionary of African Biography and the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Before joining AUS, Dr. Salvadore taught in colleges in the US and Kuwait.

Dr. Sara Marzagora

Disciplines:Literature, History
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Amharic, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature in European languages, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1900-1950, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1951-1974
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (good), French (good), Italian (native fluency)
Specific research areas: Ethiopian political thought; Ethiopian intellectual history
Period: Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE)
Position: Postdoc at SOAS University of London
Country: From Italy, lives in UK
Dr Sara Marzagora is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at SOAS University of London. She is the research leader of the Horn of Africa strand of the project Multilingual Locals and Significant Geographies (MULOSIGE), which explores world literature and intellectual history from the perspective of multilingual societies. Her PhD thesis analysed the political thought of Amharic-speaking intellectuals in Ethiopia from the end of the 19th century to the late 1960s. She has published on Ethiopian intellectual history and political thought, Amharic literature and Ethiopian historiography.

Prof. Erin C MacLeod

Disciplines: Anthropology, History
Broad research areas: Ethiopian cultural identity, Ethiopianism
Specific research areas: Pan-Africanism and Ethiopia
Languages: English (native fluency), French (good), Spanish (limited working proficiency)
Period: Twentieth Century
Position: University professor at Vanier College
Country: From Canada; living in Canada

Prof. Luis Salés

Disciplines: Religion
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: prehistory, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: pre-1200, Horn of Africa history, Ethiopian/Eritrean manuscript studies
Specific research areas: Gender and Religion; Ge’ez translation theory
Periods: Ancient (1000 BCE to 1000 CE), Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE), Early Modern (1500-1800 CE)
Languages: English (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Position: University professor or lecturer, Scripps College
Country: From Mexico, living in United States: West Coast
PhD, Fordham University

Prof. Sales specializes in late ancient and medieval Christianity broadly conceived, which includes research and teaching in northeast and east African Christianities, including Coptic, Nubian, and Ethiopian Christians. He is primarily interested in religious constructions of gender, particularly in hagiographies and chronographies.

Dr. Solomon Gebreyes

Disciplines: History, Philology
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1200-1500, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1600-1800, Ethiopian/Eritrean manuscript studies Specific research areas: Royal historiography of Ethiopia (Ge`ez chronicles)
Periods: Early Modern (1500-1800 CE)
Languages: English (good), Amharic (native fluency), German (good), Oromo (good), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Position: Research Fellow at the University of Hamburg
Country: From Ethiopia, lives in Germany
Solomon Gebreyes specializes in Gǝʿǝz Philology as well as medieval and modern Ethiopian history. He holds a BA and MA degree in History from Addis Ababa University and a PhD degree from the University of Hamburg in Ethiopian Studies. He was a lecturer in History and Civic and Ethical education for several years at colleges and universities in Ethiopia. He completed his doctoral thesis entitled “The Chronicle of King Gälawdewos (1540–1559): A Critical Edition with Annotated Translation,” which was published in 2018 in the Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium series (I–II, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, 667, 668, Scriptores Aethiopici 116, 117; Lovanii: Peeters). He is currently a Research Fellow at the Hiob Ludolf Centre for Ethiopian Studies at the University of Hamburg, working for the project Beta maṣāḥǝft (“Die Schriftkultur des christlichen Äthiopiens und Eritreas: Eine multimediale Forschungsumgebung”).

Prof. Endalkachew Hailu Guluma

Disciplines: Literature

Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Oromo, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Amharic, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Tigrinya, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in other African languages, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature in European languages, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: film, Ethiopian/Eritrean philosophy, Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1993 to present, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural history, Ethiopian/Eritrean ethnohistory or historical anthropology, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural anthropology, Ethiopian/Eritrean environmental studies (ethnoecology)

Specific research areas: Amharic, Oromo, and Ethiopian Diaspora literature in English, Ethiopian Oral Literature, Ethiopian Folklore and Environmental Humanities; gender in language, literature and orature; ideology in literature; indigenous knowledge

Periods: Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE), Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)

Languages: English (good), Amharic (native fluency), Oromo (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez

Position: Lecturer at Arba Minch University, Department of English Language and Literature

Country:  From Ethiopia, lives in Ethiopia

Dr. Endalkachew Hailu Guluma, on Academia and ResearchGate, has been a lecturer at Arba Minch University since 2005, teaching English language and literature courses and conducting research on Ethiopian poetry and novels. . He completed high school at Bethel Evangelical Secondary School, in Dembi Dollo, Western Ethiopia, in June 2000, and completed a BA in Foreign/English/ Language and Literature in July 2005 at Debub/Hawasa/ University. His BA thesis was titled “A Thematic [and Postcolonial] Appraisal of Biruk Gebre Medhin’s [English Poem] ‘My Seal’.”  He completed his MA in English literature at at Addis Ababa University in 2008 with an MA Thesis titled “The Predicament of the Diaspora in Texture of Dreams and The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears.” He also wrote about “The Psychodynamics of Plot in Somerset Maugham’s short Story ‘A String of Beads’,” “Colonialism as a Boomerang in Mongo Beti’s The Poor Christ of Bomba,” “A Stylistic Analysis of Irony in Gemoraw’s Poem ‘Oh Robot’”, and others. He published “A Comparative Study of Modernization and the Modern Intelligentsia as Reflected in Be’alu Girma’s ‘käʾadəmasə bašagärə’ and Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters” in the Proceedings of the 4th Annual Research Symposium of Arba Minch University. He completed his Ph.D. in Literature in June 2017 at Addis Ababa University with a thesis entitled “A Deconstructive Reading of Ideology in Selected Post 1991 Amharic and Afan Oromo Novels.” He published an article in the Ethiopian Journal of Business and Social Science titled “Disillusionment as Central in the Lives of the African Diaspora: The Case of Two Ethiopian Diaspora Novels.” His book in process is a comparative study of ideology in Amharic and Afan Oromo novels with three core chapters: “Ideology and Remembering the Past,” “Ideology and Making Sense of the Present,” and “Ideology and Envisioning a Future.” The third chapter is a critical reading of two futuristic Amharic and Afaan Oromo novels.  He is writing three articles, titled “Wallo Cultural Worldview and Indigenizing of Modernity as Mikəlolə, a Clothing of Honor Fashioned by Ourselves, in the Novel ሚክሎል የመቻል ሚዛን mikəlolə yämäčalə mizanə by Seyoum Gebre-Hiywot”; “An Ecocritical Revaluation of Traditional Environmental Thought and Ecological Knowledge of the Aari of Southern Ethiopia: Towards a Synergy of Traditional and Modern Approaches to Conservation in Africa”;  and “ A Study of Gender in Gamo Language and Orature through Critical Discourse Analysis.” His fields are deconstruction, poststructuralism, ecocriticism, feminism, environmental humanities, and indigenous knowledge studies. 

Dr. Amsalu Tefera

Disciplines: History, Philology, Linguistics, Religion, Literature, Biblical studies
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1200-1500, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1600-1800, Ethiopian/Eritrean manuscript studies 
Specific research areas: Textual edition, digitization and Cataloguing of manuscripts, Semitic Studies 
Periods: Medieval; Early Modern (1500-1800 CE)
Languages: English (good), Amharic (native fluency), Italian (good), German (good), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Position: Assistant Professor, Addis Ababa University
Country: From Ethiopia, lives in Ethiopia

Dr. Amsalu studies the literary heritage of Ethiopia, specializing in Ethiopian Philology. His primary interest is textual scholarship, including critical editions, annotations, translations, and analysis of Ethiopic manuscripts & Gǝʿǝz literatures. He is interested in biblical, apocryphal, hagiographic, homiletic, historical, religious, linguistic, social, as well as political literary genres and the digitization and cataloguing of manuscripts; Semitic languages, and comparative & historical linguistics. His recent books include The Ethiopian Homily on the Ark of the Covenant: Critical Edition and Annotated Translation of Dǝrsanä Ṣǝyon (2015) and ነቅዐ መጻሕፍት  – ከ600 በላይ በግዕዝ የተጻፉ የኢትዮጵያ መጻሕፍት ዝርዝር ከማብራሪያ ጋር (The Source of Books – Annotated Bibliography of 600 Ethiopic texts composed in Ge‘ez), Jajaw Printers and Developers P.L.C., Addis Ababa, 2011 E.C. [2019]. Some of his published chapters and articles include “‘Cycles of Zion’ in Ethiopic texts,” “Mariology in the E.O.T.C. Tradition: Special Emphasis on Dǝrsanä Ṣǝyon,” “Dǝrsanä Ṣǝyon: Philological inquiries into the text,” “Gädlä Bǝsṭawros”,  “Colophonic Reflections on Dǝrsanä Ṣǝyon and Kǝbrä Nägäśt”, ‘Cycles of Zion’ in Ethiopic Texts’, የዐማርኛ ሥርዐተ ጽሕፈት በኢትዮጵያ ቤተ ክርስቲያን ሊቃውንት እይታ (Amharic Orthography in the view of Ethiopian Church Scholars), “A Fifteenth—Century Ethiopian Homily on the Archangel Uriel.” His degrees are BA in Theology, Holy Trinity Theological College, Addis Ababa, 2000; MA in Philology, Addis Ababa University, 2007; PhD in Ethiopian Philology, Addis Ababa University and Università degli di Studi Firenze (Italy), 2011.

Dr. Martin Orwin

Disciplines: Literature, Linguistics
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Amharic, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in other African languages, Ethiopian/Eritrean linguistics, Somali language and literature
Specific research areas: Somali language and literature, metrical studies, literary linguistics, poetry translation, music and language
Periods: Nineteenth Century (1800-1900 CE), Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE), Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (good), French (good), German (good), Italian (good), Somali
Position: University professor or lecturer, SOAS University of London
Country: From United Kingdom, lives in United Kingdom
Dr. Martin Orwin is Senior Lecturer in Somali and Amharic at SOAS University of London and teaches Somali language to all levels. In the past he has also taught Amharic language and literature. His research concentrates on language use in Somali poetry with a particular interest in metre and other formal features. He has also translated Somali poetry for various publications. He regularly participates in events in Europe and the Horn of Africa relating to Somali language and literature. https://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff31566.php

Dr. Andrew DeCort

Disciplines: Religion, Philosophy
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature in European languages, Ethiopian/Eritrean philosophy, Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: pre-1200, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1993 to present
Specific research areas: Ethiopian political theology, e.g., the ancient Axumite inscriptions, royal Chronicles, Kebra Negast, Fetha Negast, up through contemporary Christian engagement or abandonment of politics.
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (good), French (good), German (good)
Period: Twentieth-Century (1900-2000)
Position: Lecturer at the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology
Country: From US, lives in Ethiopia
Andrew DeCort is president of the Institute for Christianity and the Common Good (www.iccgood.org) and lecturer in Ethics and Public Theology at the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology. Andrew is the author of Bonhoeffer’s New Beginning: Ethics After Devastation and holds a PhD in Theological Ethics from the University of Chicago. His research in Ethiopian studies focuses on religion and politics.

Dr. Alula Pankhurst

Disciplines: Anthropology
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural anthropology
Specific research areas: social change; research on migration, dispute resolution, children and youth, customary institutions
Periods: Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (native fluency), French (native fluency), German (good), Italian (good)
Position: Young Lives Country Director, Ethiopia WIDE lead researcher, PDRC Manager
Country: From UK, Ethiopia, lives in UK, Ethiopia
Alula Pankhurst has a BA in oriental languages from the University of Oxford, and an MA and PhD in anthropology from the University of Manchester. He taught Social Anthropology at Addis Ababa University for 16 years, where he was associate professor. He has research projects on longitudinal change as a lead researcher at Ethiopia WIDE, serves as country director for Young Lives Ethiopia.org, and as Pankhurst Development and Research Consulting (PDRC) Manager.

Dr. Balázs Szélinger

Disciplines: History
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean art: twentieth century, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1800-1900, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1900-1950, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1951-1974, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1974-1992, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1993 to present, Ethiopian/Eritrean history 1900 to present, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural history, Horn of Africa history
Specific research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean/Horn of Africa and Eastern Europe relations
Periods: Nineteenth Century (1800-1900 CE), Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE), Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Languages: English (good), Hungarian
Position: Diplomat at the Embassy of Hungary in Addis Ababa
Country: From Hungary, lives in Ethiopia
Born in 1969, Balázs Szélinger received a PhD in History in 2009 from University of Szeged, Hungary. He was assistant professor of history at Mekelle University, Ethiopia, 2010-2014. He was research assistant at University of Huddersfield, UK, 2016-2017. He has been economic and trade attaché at the Embassy of Hungary in Addis Ababa since 2017.

Dr. Tedla Desta

Disciplines: Literature, History, Religion, Communications, Conflict Resolution, Development
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Amharic, Ethiopian/Eritrean philosophy, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1800-1900, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural history, Ethiopian/Eritrean history of international/world relations, Horn of Africa history, Ethiopian/Eritrean environmental studies (ethnoecology), Ethiopian/Eritrean manuscript studies
Specific research areas: Horn of Africa, Ethiopia-Europe Relations, Marian Studies, Solomonic Dynasty
Periods: Pre-history (pre-1000 BCE), Nineteenth Century (1800-1900 CE)
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (native fluency), French (good)
Position: University staff or administrator, Queen’s University, Canada
Country: From Ethiopia, living in Canada
PhD, Trinity College Dublin

Tedla Desta has an interdisciplinary research and teaching background including international development, journalism, Horn of Africa, Ethiopian culture and history and human rights. Tedla completed his PhD in Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Ireland in 2015 researching the communications, conflict and peace nexus from a multidisciplinary perspective. He lectured and was a researcher in Trinity College Dublin and Maynooth University, Ireland, Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland and Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), Pretoria, South Africa. Tedla also has experience in coordinating and writing of research and funding proposals. He has published research papers in various academic journals on interdisciplinary issues. He currently lives and works in Canada.

Dr. Rachael Hill        

Disciplines: History, Anthropology    
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1900-1950, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1951-1974, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1974-1992, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural history, Horn of Africa history, Ethiopian/Eritrean manuscript studies      
Specific research areas:
Health, science and medicine      
Periods: Nineteenth Century (1800-1900 CE), Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE)           
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (good) 
Position: University professor or lecturer   San Francisco State University     
Country: From United States, lives in United States: West Coast           
PhD        Stanford University                        

Dr. Hill’s research interests sit at the intersection of science and technology studies and the history of health and healing. Her dissertation focused on the history of Ethiopia’s efforts to legislate and study traditional medicine in the twentieth century.

Dr Marcin Krawczuk

Disciplines: Religion
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean history
Specific research areas: Hagiography
Languages: English (good), Polish (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Period: 
Position: Professor, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Warsaw
Country: From Poland, lives in Poland

He teaches Gəʽəz at Warsaw university. His PhD was an edition of the Ethiopic text of the Gadla ’Arsimā (Life of St Rhipsime, a female saint) from the collection of Gadla Samāʽətāt. He has published in Polish and English. [more to come]

Dr. Margaux Herman

Discipline: History
Broad Research Areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1200-1500, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1600-1800, Women History / Gender
Specific Research Areas: Gender and Women in History
Periods: Early Modern (1500-1800 CE)
Languages: English (good), Amharic (good), French (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Profession: Independent scholar, IMAF (Institut des Mondes Africains – Paris France)/ CFEE ( French Center For Ethiopian Studies- Addis Abeba Ethiopia)
Country: From France, lives in Ethiopia
Margaux Herman, Ph.D (2012, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University), is one of the rare specialists on Ethiopian women’s history and coordinates a research program on Women and Gender in the Horn of Africa at the CFFE in Addis Abeba. https://cnrs.academia.edu/MargauxHerman

Dr. David Elias

Disciplines: Philology
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in other African languages
Languages: English (native fluency), Tigre language
Period: Twentieth-Century (1900-2000), Twenty-first Century (2000-present)
Position: Independent scholar
Country: From US, lives in US

Dr. Sarah Derbew

Discipline: Literature
Broad Research Areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature in European languages
Specific Research Areas: Ancient Ethiopia, African novels
Periods: Pre-history (pre-1000 BCE), Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (good), French (good)
Profession: Assistant Professor
Country: From Ethiopia, United States; lives in United States: East Coast

Sarah Derbew has a PhD from Yale University, is a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University, and is Assistant Professor of Classics at Stanford University as of September 2020. Her research focuses on critical and self-reflexive theorizations of race and black skin color in ancient Greek literature (tragedy, historiography, novel) and art, from the fifth century BCE to the fourth century CE. She is currently working on a monograph provisionally entitled Decolonizing Blackness: Representations of Black People in Greek Antiquity (under contract with Cambridge University Press). Her current research does not focus on Ethiopia per se, but on ancient representations of people called Aithiopians (from northern Sudan/southern Egypt) in ancient Greek literature and art. https://classics.stanford.edu/people/sarah-derbew

Prof. Tesfaye Mesele

Discipline: Literature
Broad Research Areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Oromo, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Amharic
Specific Research Areas: gender in literature, lyric poetry, folk games,
Periods: Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Languages: English (good), Amharic (native fluency), Tigrinya (native fluency)
Profession: University professor, Mekelle University
Country: From Ethiopia; lives in Ethiopia

Tesfaye Mesele Zinabu teaches at Mekelle University and received his PhD in Literature from Ababa University. He teaches courses of literature and gender at Mekelle University. His research area is literature, gender, discourse, education and folklore. He is also a short story writer.

Dr. Sandra Rowoldt Shell

Discipline: History
Broad Research Areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1800-1900, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1900-1950, Horn of Africa history
Specific Research Areas: Oromo history; slavery, Oromo; slave-trade, Oromo
Periods: Nineteenth Century (1800-1900 CE), Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE)
Languages: English (native fluency), French (good)
Profession: Senior Research Associate (Rhodes University)
Country: From Zimbabwe; lives in South Africa

Zimbabwe-born Sandra Rowoldt Shell worked as a professional academic research librarian and archivist in African studies for many years. She earned both her master’s and doctoral degrees in history at the University of Cape Town. She has published widely, most recently Protean Paradox: George Edward Cory (1862-1935): Navigating Life and South African History (Grahamstown: Rhodes University, 2017) and Children of Hope: The Odyssey of The Oromo Slave Children from Ethiopia to South Africa (Ohio, OH: Ohio University Press, 2018; Cape Town: UCT Press/Juta, 2019; and Addis Ababa: Shama Books, 2019) and Indoda Ebisithanda (The Man who Loved Us): The Rev James Laing among the amaXhosa, 1831-1836 HiPSA3rd Series: 01 (Cape Town: Historical Publications Southern Africa, 2019). She is presently Senior Research Associate (Cory Library), at Rhodes University, South Africa. https://rhodes-za.academia.edu/SandyRowoldtShell; https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sandy_Shell3

Dr. Tanja R. Müller

Discipline: Anthropology, Geography
Broad Research Areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean history 1900 to present, Horn of Africa history, Eritrea/Ethiopia/Horn of Africa Politics
Specific Research Areas: Politics
Periods: Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE), Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Languages: English (native fluency), French (good), German (native fluency)
Profession: University professor at University of Manchester, UK
Country: From Germany; lives in United Kingdom, Germany

Tanja R. Müller is Reader in Development Studies at the Global Development Institute, and founding member and former director of research of the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, both at the University of Manchester. She is also a founding member and current convenor of the Manchester Migration Lab. She received her PhD at the University of East Anglia, UK. To learn more about Tanja’s work and research see: http://aspirationandrevolution.wordpress.com/ or https://tanjarmueller.wordpress.com/

Prof. Peter Nadig

Discipline: History
Broad Research Areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean history: pre-1200, Horn of Africa history
Specific Research Areas Ancient history, Hellenism, Ptolemaic Egypt, Pharaonic Egypt (here: 18th Dynasty), Hatshepsut, Military History
Periods: Pre-history (pre-1000 BCE), Ancient (1000 BCE to 1000 CE), Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE)
Languages: English (good), French (good), German (native fluency), Ancient Egyptian, Latin, Greek
Profession: University professor at Mekelle University (Ethiopia), College of Social Sciences and Languages
Country: From Germany; lives in Ethiopia

Peter Nadig was born in West Germany. He attended the Fachhochschule in Düsseldorf where he receiced a degree in Visual Communication (graphic design) in 1987. After this he studied Ancient and Medieval History as well as English Literature at Düsseldorf University where he received an MA (1993) and PhD (1997). He also concluded his postgraduate thesis there in 2004. He taught at the Universities of Düsseldorf, Freiburg, Berlin (Free University), Magedeburg, and Rostock. He worked at a project on eraly Church History at the Technical University of Aachen (1997-2006) and at a project on the Costs of Ancient Warfare at the Universities of Mannheim and Erfurt (2007-2009). Since 2009, he has been affiliated with the Free University of Berlin, where he worked at the Department of Historical Geography of the Mediterranean world. Since May 2016, he is Full Professor for Ancient History in the PhD Programme “History and Cultural Studies” – as well as its coordinator – at Mekelle University.

Dr. Meseret Hailu

Disciplines: History; Education
Broad research areas: higher education, development, women’s issues in education
Specific research areas: gender equity in STEM education
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (good)
Period: Twenty-first Century (2000-present)
Position: University professor at Arizona State University
Country: From Ethiopia; living in United States: West Coast

Dr. Meseret Hailu is an Assistant Professor of Higher and Postsecondary Education in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University. The overarching theme of her research is the pursuit of gender equity in STEM education, and she focuses on the strategies, programs, and systems that help historically underrepresented students and faculty succeed in these fields. Dr. Hailu’s research agenda relies on a critical analysis of systems of power, access, and opportunity in postsecondary education. She received her PhD from the University of Denver.
https://www.meserethailu.com/about

Dr. Mohamed Haji Ingiriis

Discipline: History, Religion, Anthropology
Broad Research Areas: Horn of Africa history, Somali Studies
Specific Research Areas: Modern Somali history
Periods: Nineteenth Century (1800-1900 CE), Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE), Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Languages: English (good), French (good), Italian (good)
Profession: University professor or lecturer, King’s College London
Country: From Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya, Uganda; lives in United Kingdom, Germany

Mohamed Haji Ingiriis received his doctorate from the University of Oxford and is a Somali scholar of Somali society. He teaches at several universities in Africa and Europe. He did extensive fieldwork in Somalia, Djibouti, Kenya, and Ethiopia. https://oxford.academia.edu/MohamedHajiIngiriis

Dr. Abdirachid M. Ismail

Discipline: Literature, Philosophy, Linguistics
Broad Research Areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean linguistics, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural anthropology
Specific Research Areas:  Culture, social transformations, geopolitics, comparative linguistic
Periods: Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE)
Languages: English (good), French (native fluency), Somali
Profession: University professor, University of Djibouti
Country: From Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya, Uganda; lives in Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, France

Dr. Abdirachid M. Ismail is a founding member of the Independent Research Institute of the Horn of Africa (IRICA) and a senior lecturer at the University of Djibouti. He was Head of its Literature and Linguistics Department, and Chief Executive of its Continuing Education Center for six years. He coordinates and directs pedagogical or organisational projects such the Ten-Year Strategic Plan for Higher Education, the Creation of the Intergovernmental Academy of Somali Language in 2013, and has worked as a consultant for various organisations. He is editor-in-chief of IRICA’s Newsletter and serves as editorial board member on prominent international journals. His research interests include language, culture, and communication as well as organisation management. His most recent research appeared in such flagship journals as Pount. His last book is titled Reconfiguring the Somali Nation: Changing Conversations, Shiftings Paradigms, published by INALCO (Institut National des Langues et Cultures Orientales) – PARIS. www.irica-dj.com

Dr. Giovanni (Gianni) Dore

Disciplines:Anthropology
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Tigrinya, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1900-1950, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1993 to present, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural anthropology
Specific research areas: Kunama ethnicity, gender and material culture, Eritrean/Ethiopian material culture, Italian colonialism em>Period: Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE)
Languages: English (good), French (good), Italian (native fluency), Kunama
Position: Scholar at Venice Ca’ Foscari University
Country: From Italy, lives in Italy
He is Former Aggregate Professor of Cultural Anthropology, History and Ethnography of Africa, History of Material Culture (Venice Ca’ Foscari University). He has conducted field research in Sardinian Material Culture and Folklore, field research in Ethiopia and Eritrea (Kunama migrants in Addis Ababa 1991-1995, Kunama in Eritrean Western Lowlands 1993- 2010). He has also studied Italian colonialism in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia, and the history of Italian Anthropological Studies. He is currently affiliated for scientific research to the Department of Asian and Northern African Studies, Venice Ca’ Foscari University.
He is a member of the Linguistic and Anthropological Mission Atlas of Saho Traditional Material Culture (ASTMC), the scientific board of Ethnorema (oneline journal), on the editorial Board of Erreffe.La Ricerca folklorica. See his publications at the Ca’ Foscari University web site or Academia.edu.

Prof. Terje Ostebo

Disciplines:Religion
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology
Specific research areas: Contemporary Islam in Ethiopia
Languages: English (native fluency), Oromo (good)
Period: Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Position: University professor at Center for African Studies, University of Florida
Country: From Norway, lives in US

Terje Østebø received his PhD in the History of Religion from Stockholm University, and is currently the chair of the Department of Religion and associate professor at the Center for African Studies and the Department of Religion, University of Florida. His research interests are Islam in contemporary Ethiopia, Islam, politics, and Islamic reformism in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, as well as Salafism in Africa. He has lived in Ethiopia for 6 years, and has extensive field-research experience.

Recent publications include Muslim Ethiopia: The Christian Legacy, Identity Politics, and Islamic Reformism (co-edited with Patrick Desplat), (Palgrave-Macmillan 2013); Localising Salafism: Religious Change among Oromo Muslims in Bale, Ethiopia (Brill 2012); “The revenge of the Jinn: Salafism and Perceptions of Change in Contemporary Bale (Ethiopia)”, in Contemporary Islam, 8, 1, 2014; “Islam and State Relations in Ethiopia: From Containment to the Production of a ’Governmental Islam’”, in Journal of the American Academy of Religion,81, 3, 2013.“Revolutionary Democracy and Religious Plurality: Islam and Christianity in Post-Derg Ethiopia” in Journal of East African Studies, 5, 2 (2011); ”Local Reformers and the Search for Change: The Emergence of Salafism in Bale, Ethiopia” in Africa, 81, 4 (2011); Islamism in the Horn of Africa: Assessing Ideology, Actors, and Objectives, International Law and Policy Institute (2010).

Dr. Assefa Dibaba

Disciplines:Literature
Broad research areas: Ethnoecology (Cultural Ecology)
Languages: English (good), Amharic (good), Oromo (native fluency)
Position: Independent Scholar
Country: From Ethiopia, lives in Ethiopia and the US
His research interest is on exploring alter/native indigenous practices used to balance human ecology.

Dr. Sean Winslow

Disciplines: History
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean history: pre-1200, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1200-1500, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1600-1800, Ethiopian/Eritrean manuscript studies
Specific research areas: Scribal Practices; Craft Production
Languages: English (native fluency)
Period: Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE), Early Modern (1500-1800 CE)
Position: Post-doc at Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz
Country: From US, lives in Austria
Sean M. Winslow is a post-doc in Information Modelling at the Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz. He is a manuscript historian, focusing on the craft practices of book production; his forthcoming monograph documents Ethiopian scribal/bookmaking practice. He has an online exhibit on Ethiopian scribal practices. For more detailed information, see Ethiopian Manuscript Production: Practices and Contexts. Dr. Winslow’s current work focuses on the cataloguing and description of Ethiopian binding tools and decoration.

Dr. Mikael Muehlbauer

Disciplines: History, Art
Broad research areas: Ethiopian art: ancient (pre-1200), Ethiopian art: medieval (1200-1500)
Languages: English (native fluency), French (good), German (good), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Specific research areas: Architecture of Tigray
Period: Ancient (to 1000), Middle Ages (1000-1500)
Position: Graduate of Columbia University
Country: From US, lives in US

Dr. Angela Raven-Roberts

Disciplines: Development, environmental studies
Specific Research Interests:Livelihood studies, response to climate change; history of development in Ethiopia and community management of risk and vulnerability
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (native fluency)
Position: Independent scholar
Country: From UK, lives in UK

Dr. Maija Priess

Disciplines: Philology
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology, Ethiopian/Eritrean manuscript studies
Specific research areas: Ge’ez orth liturgy, OT
Periods:  Early Modern (1500-1800 CE)
Languages:  English (good), Amharic (good), French (good), German (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez, Finnish (native), Swedish (good), Spanish (good), Portuguese (goo
Position:  University professor or lecturer, Priest/Pastor
Degree:  PhD
Degree from:  Universität Hamburg, Asien-Afrika-Institut
Country from:  Finland
Country in:  Germany       Institution at:     Universität Hamburg (PhD), University of Helsinki (MA)
Website in: 
Bio:  She graduated from the theology, University of Helsinki 1981. She visited Ethiopia for the first time Dec. 1985 and after that more than 10x. She got married and moved to Germany in 1991. She studied Africanistics/Ethiopian Studies at the Univ. Hamburg 1996-2006 and got her PhD 2006. She has been teaching Ge’ez since 2003 and Amharic since 2013. She worked for the Journal Aethiopica 2001-2011. She supports Eritrean refugees and works voluntarily as interpreter using Amharic.

Dr. Abraha Weldu Hailemariam

Disciplines: History
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural history
Specific research areas: Biography, cultural history
Periods:  Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE)
Languages:  Tigrinya (native fluency)
Position:  University professor or lecturer
Degree:  PhD
Degree from:  Bule Hora University, Department of History and Heritage Managment
Country from:  Ethiopia
Country in:  Ethiopia        Institution at:     Mekelle University
Website in:  No
Bio:  Abraha Weldu studied History, Geography, and Cultural Studies. Abraha received his Bachelor and Master’s Degrees in History and cultural Studies from Arbaminch and Bahir Dar University, in 2008 and 2012, respectively. For more than seven years, he taught various course of History ad Heritages Studies at Bule Hora University, Ethiopia. Currently, he is a PhD student in History and Cultural Studies at Mekelle University, Ethiopia. His PhD project is an intellectual biography in one of the most prominent diplomat and cultural attaché of twentieth-century Ethiopia. In 2019, Abraha was one of the few students to get a full schorship at Bergen Summer Research School, Norway. With a grant from the University of Bergen, he was able to conduct a research project on the history of Ethiopian cultural policy and creative arts. He is also a member of the research team on migration.

Dr. Peter Unseth

Disciplines: Linguistics, Proverbs
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in other African languages, Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology, Ethiopian/Eritrean linguistics
Specific research areas: Proverbs in the Horn of Africa, all languages. Also, Bible translations
Periods:  Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Languages:  English (native fluency), Amharic (good)
Position:  University professor or lecturer
Degree:  PhD
Degree from:  Dallas International University
Country from:  United States
Country in:  United States: Southern
Institution at:     PhD at University of Texas at Arlington
Website in: 
Bio:  He worked with Nilo-Saharan languages in Ethiopia, at first under AAU, then EECMY. His dissertation was about the reduplication pattern in Amharic that reduplicates the last two consonants of a root, such as the root sbr ‘break’ reduplicating as sbrbari ‘a shard, small broken piece’. Now he studies proverbs, currently writing a manual for researchers who are writing about proverbs in their own language (or another). He is interested in studying proverbs and patterns that are shared across languages, within Ethiopia and also beyond, e.g. The World’s Oldest Recorded Proverb Discovered Thriving in Ethiopia. Aethiopica 21:226-236. 2018.

Dr. Alpha Abebe

Disciplines: Diaspora Studies
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean art: twenty-first century, Ethiopian diaspora
Specific research areas: Ethiopian: Diasporic identities, Diasporic media, Diasporic art practices, Second-generation diasporic experiences and identities, Diaspora-State relations, Diasporic philanthropy and development efforts
Periods:  Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Languages:  English (native fluency), Amharic (good)
Position:  University professor or lecturer
Degree:  PhD
Degree from:  McMaster University
Country from:  Canadian-born, Ethiopian-origin
Country in:  Canada         Institution at:     University of Oxford
Website in:  www.alphaabebe.com
Bio:  Alpha Abebe is an academic and community organizer from Toronto, Canada. She is currently an Assistant Professor with the Faculty of Humanities at McMaster University. Alpha completed her PhD in International Development at the University of Oxford, and her research examined how and why young people in the Ethiopian diaspora engage with development initiatives in Ethiopia. She is also a photographer, and conducts work that examines the intersection of diasporic identities and artistic practice.

Dr. Deresse Ayenachew Woldetsadik

Disciplines: History
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean art: medieval (1200-1500), Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1200-1500, Horn of Africa history, Ethiopian/Eritrean manuscript studies
Specific research areas: Medieval Ethiopian political history ( Administration, Military, Ideology, religions, economy)
Periods:  Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE), Early Modern (1500-1800 CE)
Languages:  English (good), Amharic (native fluency), French (good), Oromo (native fluency)
Position:  University professor or lecturer
Degree:  PhD
Degree from:  Aix-Marseille University(IREMAM)ERC-HORNEAST Program
Country from:  Ethiopia
Country in:  France           Institution at:     UNiversity of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Website in:  Institut d’études avancées-Nante, University of Aix-Marseille, IREMAM, ERC-HORNESAT
Bio:  Deresse Ayenachew Woldetsadik is assistant professor of History in Debre Berhan University and now researcher in the University of Aix-Marseille in the ERC-HORNESAT Program(France). He was also a 2017-2018 research fellow of Institute of studies-Nantes, France. He specializes in medieval history of Ethiopia and published on diverse aspects including royal administrations, Islamic history, megalithic cultures, environmental history and process of migrations and settlements in the Horn of Africa.

Dr. Adam Simmons

Disciplines: History, Linguistics, Archaeology
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean history: pre-1200, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1200-1500, Ethiopian/Eritrean historical archaeology, Ethiopian/Eritrean history of international/world relations, Horn of Africa history
Specific research areas: Ethiopia, Nubia, Crusades, Sub-Saharan Africa, Diasporas, Indian Ocean
Periods:  Ancient (1000 BCE to 1000 CE), Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE), Early Modern (1500-1800 CE)
Languages:  English (native fluency), French (good), German (good), Italian (good), Ethiopic/Ge`ez, Greek, Old Nubian, Arabic, Portuguese (varying proficiencies)
Position:  Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Degree:  PhD
Degree from:  Nottingham Trent University
Country from:  United Kingdom
Country in:  United Kingdom         Institution at:     University of Lancaster
Website in: 
Bio:  His initial research interests focused on the relationship between Nubia, Ethiopia, and the Crusades (both physically and intellectually). His current research project centers on the the development of African and Portuguese engagement strategies c.1415-c.1550 in West, Central, and East Africa, ultimately tying together the Latin Christian relations with Ethiopia during the Crusades to those following the circumnavigation of Africa and the links and developments in between. The overall research focus of his work centers retracing the presence and influences of African diasporas and the intercontinental and international connections of Africa between c.400-c.1600.

Professor Ertiban Demewoz Molla

Disciplines: History, Philology, Religion, Anthropology
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Amharic, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: pre-1200, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1200-1500, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1600-1800, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1800-1900, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1900-1950, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural history, Ethiopian/Eritrean ethnohistory or historical anthropology, Horn of Africa history, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural anthropology
Specific research areas: Ge’ez language(lexicography, hagiography), folklore, heritage studies, tourism management, history
Periods:  Ancient (1000 BCE to 1000 CE), Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE), Early Modern (1500-1800 CE), Nineteenth Century (1800-1900 CE)
Languages:  English (good), Amharic (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Position:  University professor or lecturer, Priest/Pastor
Degree:  EOTC Traditional Education, MA
Degree from:  Debre Tabor University, Department of Tourism and Hotel management
Country from:  Ethiopia
Country in:  Ethiopia        Institution at:     from Gondar University
Website in:  president@dtu.edu.et
Bio:  He has more than eleven years of teaching experience in higher education institutions. Within these years, he has completed more than five research works and wrote a tri-lingual book (Ge’ez- Amharic- English). He has knowledge of the Ge’ez language, history and Commentary books. He also has administrative experience of more  than five years, being department head of Tourism and Hotel Management and director for Cultural Studies  at Debre Tabor University.

Dr. Gidena Mesfin

Disciplines: Literature, Religion
Broad research areas: Ethiopian literature/folklore in Tigrinya, Ethiopian literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian religion and theology, Ethiopian history: 1800-1900
Specific research areas: Ethiopian Manuscripts/”Magical” manuscripts
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (native fluency), German (good), Tigrinya (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Position:Postdoctoral researcher at
Country: From Ethiopia, lives in Ethiopia

Dr. Desalegn Amsalu

Disciplines: Anthropology
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean history 1900 to present, Ethiopian/Eritrean ethnohistory or historical anthropology, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural anthropology
Specific research areas: Ethnography of northwest Ethiopia, minorities, marginalization, legal pluralism, ethnic relations, ethnicity
Periods:  cross-cutting periods that span across one or more listed above.
Languages:  English (good), Amharic (native fluency)
Position:  University professor or lecturer
Degree:  PhD
Degree from:  Addis Ababa University
Country from:  Ethiopia
Country in:  Ethiopia        Institution at:     Addis Ababa University
Website in:  http://www.aau.edu.et/ies/dr-desalegn-amsalu/
Bio:  Desalegn Amsalu has been a researcher at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies since 2008. He completed his PhD in Social Anthropology in 2016. He has done extensive fieldwork in Ethiopia since 2008. His publications are related to topics of identity and victimhood, inter-ethnic relations, social marginalization and vulnerable groups, as well as legal pluralism, minorities and social marginalization. He also lectures courses at the Department of Social Anthropology at Addis Ababa University. Since July 2018, he is the head of the research unit at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University.

Dr. Vitagrazia Pisani

Disciplines: Literature, Philology, Linguistics
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean manuscript studies
Specific research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean (Ge’ez) literature; Ethiopian/Eritrean (Ge’ez) hagiographies; Ethiopian/Eritrean (Ge’ez) Manuscript studies; Philology; Text-criticism; Linguistics
Periods:  Ancient (1000 BCE to 1000 CE), Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE)
Languages:  English (good), German (good), Italian (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez, French, Tigrinya, Arabic, Latin
Position:  Research Fellow
Degree:  PhD
Degree from:  Hamburg University
Country from:  Italy
Country in:  Germany       Institution at:     Naples Oriental Institute (PHD, MA)
Website in:  https://uni-hamburg.academia.edu/VitagraziaPisani

Bio:  Vitagrazia Pisani has a Master’s degree and PhD in Ethiopian/Eritrean (Ge’ez) Philology from Naples Oriental Institute. She was a Research Associate at the Hiob Ludolf Center for Ethiopian Studies (Hamburg University) from 2009 to 2019, working for the project Ethio-SPaRe, Cultural Heritage of Christian Ethiopia: Salvation, Preservation, Research (ERC Starting GrantProject), and for the project TraCES: From Translation to Creation: Changes in Ethiopic Style and Lexicon from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages (ERC Advanced Grant). She now works on PEMM.

Prof. Yonatan Binyam

Prof. Wendy Laura Belcher

Disciplines: Literature, History
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic; Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1200-1500, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1600-1800, Ethiopian/Eritrean manuscript studies
Specific research areas:early African language literature, hagiographies, gender and sexuality
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (some), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Period: Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE), Early Modern (1500-1800)
Position: University Prof at Princeton University
Country: From US, lives in US

Graduate Students

Ms.  Saaret E. Yoseph              

Disciplines: Cultural Communication             
Broad research areas:Ethiopian/Eritrean literature in European languages, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: twentieth century, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: twenty-first century, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: film, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: music, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: prehistory, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1900-1950, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1951-1974, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1974-1992, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1993 to present, Ethiopian/Eritrean history 1900 to present, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural history, Ethiopian/Eritrean ethnohistory  or historical anthropology, Ethiopian/Eritrean history of international/world relations, Horn of Africa history, Ethiopian/Eritrean linguistics, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural anthropology
Specific research areas: methodologies and themes of interest include, documentary, digital media and literature; historical fiction, memoir, poetry and creative writing; migrations, origins and influence, particularly the relationship between Ethiopia and America, explored through narrative.           
Periods: Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE), Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)             
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (good)  

Position: Independent scholar, Journalist/Writer, Filmmaker            
Country: From Ethiopia, United States, and lives in United States: East Coast             

Saaret is a writer, scholar, and artist with over 10 years of diverse experience. A first-generation Ethiopian-American, Saaret is currently based in Washington, DC, where she provokes inquiry around cultural issues and amplifies underrepresented narratives. Her work has been featured on CNN, The Kojo Nnamdi Show, The Washington Post, The Root and The Ethiopian Reporter in Addis Ababa, where she penned the weekly column “Chronicles of a Diaspora Kid.” Saaret was recently commissioned for a cultural archiving project, under the History Department at Georgetown University, having worked with the Environmental Film Festival, Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum, Meridian Hill Pictures and Google Cultural Institute, among others, to launch and lead digital media campaigns. Her research and writing explores themes of migration and memory; identity and displacement within the African diaspora. She is now in development on her first feature and second documentary on the legacy of the generation that immigrated from Ethiopia to DC, during the 1970s, as well as the cultural inheritance of their first and second-generation children. Saaret has a bachelor’s degree in English and Africana Studies from the University of Maryland — Baltimore County and a master’s in Communication, Culture & Technology from Georgetown University.

Ms. Kidist Gemeda

Disciplines: Religion
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology
Specific research areas: Old Testament Ethiopic-Ge’ez Literature
Periods: Early Modern (1500-1800 CE), Nineteenth Century (1800-1900 CE)
Languages: English (good), Amharic (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Position: Doctoral student, Cambridge University; MA from Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology
Country: From Ethiopia; lives in the United Kingdom

Kidist was born in 1984 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She studied Law at Addis Ababa University. Because of her progressive interest in religious studies and theology, she joined the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology and studied theology. Presently, she is doing her PhD in Biblical Studies at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies (IOCS), Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.

Ms.  Marta Camilla Wright     

Disciplines: Religion
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural anthropology     
Specific research areas:   Contemporary Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, holy water healing, spirit possession, monasticism              
Periods:  Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)   
Languages: Norwegian (native fluency), English (good), Amharic (good) 
Position: PhD Candidate Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural studies and the study of Religion, University of Bergen, Norway  
Country:  From Norway , lives in  Norway

Marta Camilla Wright is a PhD candidate of the Study of Religion at the University of Bergen. She works in the areas of anthropology of religion and lived religion. Her current work is in contemporary Ethiopia, on topics like healing, spirit possession, gender, and materiality of religion. Her publications include “The Marian Cult in Contemporary Ethiopia” in Studies in Church History (2004), “At the Limits of Sexuality: The Femininity of Ethiopian Nuns” in Journal of Ethiopian Studies (2003), and most recently “Yäsäw ᵓəǧ: Aggressive Magic in Addis Ababa; Micro-conflicts in a Changing Society” in Journal for the Study of Religion in Africa and its Diaspora (2017). Her current work as a PhD candidate concerns holy water healing in Addis Ababa.

Mr. Bar Kribus           

Disciplines: Archaeology      
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1200-1500, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1600-1800, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1800-1900, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1900-1950, Ethiopian/Eritrean historical archaeology        
Specific research areas: Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jewish) history and material culture         
Periods: Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE), Early Modern (1500-1800 CE), Nineteenth Century (1800-1900 CE)      
Languages: English (native fluency), Italian (good), Ethiopic/Ge`ez              
Position: Doctoral candidate at Hebrew University of Jerusalem; research associate, ERC project JewsEast, Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany          
Country:   From Israel, lives in Germany             

Bar Kribus is a member of the ERC Project JewsEast at the Ruhr University, Bohum, and a PhD candidate at the Institute of Archaeology, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on Late Antique (Aksumite) and Medieval Ethiopian archaeology and on the history and material culture of the Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews). For his PhD dissertation, he is studying the monastic movement of the Beta Israel, with an emphasis on the physical, concrete lives of the monks and on Beta Israel monasteries. A central component of this research is an archaeological survey of Beta Israel monasteries in Ethiopia. See his website. 

Ms. Sofanit T. Abebe

Disciplines: History, Religion
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Amharic, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Tigrinya, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: pre-1200, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1974-1992, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural history, Ethiopian/Eritrean ethnohistory or historical anthropology
Specific research areas: Ge’ez and Amharic oral tradition, Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology
Languages: English (good), Amharic (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez, German and French (Advanced Beginner)
Period: Ancient (1000 BCE to 1000 CE), Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE), Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Position: Graduate student, University of Edinburgh
Country: From Ethiopia, lives in United Kingdom 

Sofanit T. Abebe (MA, University of Giessen, Germany, and Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology; BA Jacobs University Bremen, Germany) is a PhD student in Christian Origins doing a comparative analysis of the Ethiopic Enoch and the New Testament at the University of Edinburgh, U.K. Sofanit is also a member of faculty at the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology. She is interested in the relationship between the religio-cultural ideologies of Early Jewish Literature and popular religion in Ethiopia/Eritrea reflected in Ge’ez, Amharic and Tigrigna oral tradition.

Mr. Eyob Fekadu Derillo

Disciplines: Literature, History, Art, Philology, Religion, Linguistics
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Amharic, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: ancient (pre-1200), Ethiopian/Eritrean philosophy, Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology
Specific research areas: Geez and Amharic literature
Period: Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE), Early Modern (1500-1800 CE), Nineteenth Century (1800-1900 CE), Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE), Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE) 
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Position: PhD Student, SOAS; curator/librarian at the British Library
Country: From Ethiopia, lives in United Kingdom
Eyob Fekadu Derillo is a PhD student at SOAS University of London. His research is on amulet scrolls and däbtärä handbooks, working towards an understanding of the framework of Ethiopian magic material while giving an overview of the historical background and its iconography. The text material consists of scrolls and manuscripts on parchment, paper, and wood, surviving from the 16th to 19th centuries AD. This thesis will be a critical and informative document on these magical scrolls and their handbooks, taking into account their various contents, which are foremostly medicine, but also astrology, and divination. It also considers whether they have cohesive iconographic themes, based on a thorough examination of ornaments and images in the texts, aiming for a re-interpretation of the images within the context of the period. The analysis is concerned with the figures, themes, and narratives depicted on scrolls and manuscripts and what these choices can tell us about the social, political, cultural and religious attitudes in the period during which they were produced.
     Eyob was appointed curator for the Ethiopian collection at the British Library in 2016, which is the first post created for this since the foundation of the British Library. There, his core purpose has been to make the Ethiopian collections accessible to everyone, for research, inspiration and enjoyment. By digitizing these manuscripts, he has given wide access to them, in particular opening up the rarely seen Maqdala manuscripts collection in Europe. In 2018, on the 150th anniversary of the British 1868 Abyssinian Expedition, he curated the exhibition “African Scribes: Manuscript Culture of Ethiopia,” in the British Library’s Sir John Ritblat Treasures Gallery. It was the first exhibit to be held at the Library devoted entirely to Ethiopian manuscripts, exploring the culture of a manuscripts.

Ato Zegeye Woldemariam Ambo

Discipline: History, Anthropology
Broad Research Areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean art: medieval (1200-1500), Ethiopian/Eritrean art: early modern (1500-1900), Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1600-1800, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1800-1900, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1900-1950
Specific Research Areas: Military history ,proverbs, cultural ecology, cultural history
Periods: Early Modern (1500-1800 CE), Nineteenth Century (1800-1900 CE)
Languages: English (good), Amharic (native fluency), German (good), Oromo (good)
Country: From Ethiopia, lives in Ethiopia

Zegeye Woldemariam is a PhD candidate at Mekelle University in history and cultural studies working on the socio-cultural and ecological history of Kafa, southwest Ethiopia. He has a master’s in cultural history from and has worked at Bonga College of Teachers Education as a history lecturer teaching Ethiopian history and historiography. He was also a coordinator of the Department of Social Sciences stream. He was also a research fellow in Goethe Research Institute of Erfurt University, in Germany for five months. He is on Academia.edu and https://www.uni-erfurt.de/forschungszentrum-gotha/herzog-ernst-stipendien/stipendiaten-und-stipendiatinnen-2019/projekt-von-woldemariam-ambo-zegeye-ma/

Ms. Sophia Dege-Müller

Disciplines: History, Philology, Religion
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: medieval (1200-1500), Ethiopian/Eritrean art: early modern (1500-1900), Ethiopian/Eritrean philosophy, Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: pre-1200, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1200-1500, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1600-1800, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1800-1900, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1900-1950, Interconnection of Ethiopia with the wider (oriental Christian) world.
Specific research areas: Ethiopic/Ge`ez texts on the creation account; religious texts; Beta Israel, Ethiopian Jews; religious interactions in the Horn area; “magic” texts; historio-religious texts; Ethiopian manuscripts and their culture; cataloguing; University staff or administrator
Periods: Middle Ages (1000-1500), Early Modern (1500-1800), Nineteenth Century (1800-1900)
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (good), French (good), German (native fluency), Italian (good),
Position: Research associate, JewsEast project of Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany; Doctoral candidate at the Center for Ethiopian Studies, University of Hamburg, Germany
Country: From Germany, lives in Germany

Ms. Sarah Howard

Disciplines: Anthropology
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1974-1992, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1993 to present, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural anthropology
Specific research areas: history of state workers; anthropology of work; international development
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (good)
Period: Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Position: Graduate student in Goldsmiths Anthropology Department
Country: From UK, lives in Ethiopia
My research centres on questions about hierarchy, development and the state through my ethnographic fieldwork with rural government workers in a lowland area of North Shewa in Amhara Region.

Mr. Augustine Dickinson

Disciplines: History
Broad research areas: Ethiopian literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian history: 1200-1500
Specific research areas: Atṣ́e Zärʾa Yaʿəqob, magic, ecclesiastical history
Period: Middle Ages (1000-1500)
Languages: English (native fluency), French (good), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Position: Graduate student at University of Toronto
Country: From Canada, living in Canada

Ato Habtemariam Amare

Disciplines: Literature
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic
Languages: English (good), Amharic (native fluency), Tigrinya (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Specific research areas: Ge’ez hagiography
Period: Middle Ages (1000-1500)
Position: Lecturer, Ph.D Candidate, Department of English literature, School of Humanities, Bahir Dar University; MA from Mekelle University; EOTC Traditional Education
Country: From Ethiopia, lives in Ethiopia

Ms. Lacy Feigh

Discipline: History
Broad Research Areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature in European languages, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: twentieth century, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1800-1900, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1900-1950, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1951-1974, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1974-1992, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1993 to present, Ethiopian/Eritrean history 1900 to present, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural history, Horn of Africa history
Specific Research Areas: Migration to and from the Middle East and legacies of slavery
Periods: Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE)
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (good), Italian (good), Arabic
Profession: Graduate student at University of Pennsylvania
Country: From the United States; lives in the United States: Northern

Lacy Feigh is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on migration and the legacies of forced and bonded labor in the 20th century in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East. Specifically, Feigh’s dissertation looks at how migration within the region impacted ideas of Ethiopian identity inside and outside of Ethiopia. Her dissertation has been funded by a SSRC International Dissertation Research Fellowship and Fulbright Student Research Fellowship which has allowed her to travel to Ethiopia, the United Kingdom, Egypt, and Italy for research. Previously, Feigh served as an English teacher with Peace Corps in YirgAlem, SNNPR, Ethiopia and as a Fulbright ETA in Amman Jordan. Her BA is from Presbyterian College. https://live-sas-www-history.pantheon.sas.upenn.edu/people/grad-students/lacy-noel-feigh

Mr. Samuel Haile Kidane

Discipline: History
Broad Research Areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1600-1800
Specific Research Areas: chronicles
Period: Early Modern (1500-1800 CE)
Languages: Tigrinya (native fluency), English (some)
Profession: University lecturer, Aksum University department of history
Country: From Ethiopia; lives in Ethiopia

Samuel Kidane is a lecturer in Aksum University’s Department of History and Heritage Management. Currently, he is a PhD candidate at Addis Abeba University. His research area is on the history of Tigray during the tenure of Ras Mikael Sihul.

Ato Tariku Abas

Disciplines: Literature, Religion
Broad Research Interests: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Amharic, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature in European languages, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: early modern (1500-1900), Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1200-1500, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1600-1800, Ethiopian/Eritrean international/world relations
Languages:English (native fluency), Amharic (native fluency)
Position:Graduate student at Loyola Marymount University
Country: From Ethiopia, lives in US
Tariku Abas has taught at various institutions both in Ethiopia and USA. Currently he is a graduate student at Loyola Marymount University, with a literature/creative writing emphasis. He writes creatively, and also does research on the songs and poems of war (first and second Ethiopia-Italian wars; from Italy and Ethiopia), the letter of Ignatius Loyola about Abyssinia (how the first mission of the Jesuits to Ethiopia was destined to Fail), and “Mount Amara” in early English poetry by Heylyn, Milton, and Coleridge.

Ms. Meron Tekleberhan Gebreananaye

Disciplines: Religion
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature in European languages, Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology
Specific research areas: Biblical Reception, Appropriation and Interpretation in Ge’ez and Amharic

Periods: Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE), Early Modern (1500-1800 CE)
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez, Greek and Coptic (Research Languages)
Position: PhD Student in the Department of Religion and Theology at the University of Durham; MA from Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology
Country: From Ethiopia, lives in the UK

Mr. David Benjamin Spielman

Disciplines: History
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: pre-1200, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1200-1500, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1600-1800, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1800-1900, Ethiopian/Eritrean legal studies
Specific research areas: Fetha Nägäst, Ecclesiastical legal history, Legal Pluralism, Sharia law, Beta Israel, Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church History
Periods: MEarly Modern (1500-1800 CE)
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (good), Ethiopic/Ge`ez, Guragignya/ Sebat Bet/ Endegagne- Limited Working Proficiency
Position: Graduate student, Community College Adjunct faculty University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Department of History. Los Angeles Valley College, Department of Sociology and Ethnic Studies
Country: From US, lives in US
David B. Spielman is an Africanist and Ethiopian historian with a broader interest in the Horn of Africa. In 2018, he is a Ph.D. Candidate in the History Department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he also earned his B.A. in African American Studies and his M.A. in African Studies (Ethiopian History). David’s research is focused on the Fetha Nägäst and its practical application during the Gondarine period.

Iosif Fridman

Discipline: Linguistics
Broad Research Areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: pre-1200, Ethiopian/Eritrean linguistics, Ethiopian/Eritrean manuscript studies
Specific Research Areas: linguistic typology, Amharic grammar, Semitology
Periods: Ancient (1000 BCE to 1000 CE), Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (good), German (good), Ethiopic/Ge`ez, Modern Standard Arabic (good), Biblical and Modern Hebrew (good), Russian (native fluency)
Profession: University lecturer, St Tikhon Orthodox University for the Humanities (Moscow, Russian Federation)
Country: From Kazakhstan, lives in Russia

In 2004, Iosif Fridman graduated with a masters’ from St Tikhon Orthodox University for the Humanities, Department of Oriental Christian philology and Oriental Churches. Since that year, he has been engaged in teaching in the same Department. Courses taught include, among others, Amharic and Ge’ez, comparative Semitology, Ancient Greek. He has participated in two International Conferences for Ethiopian Studies (Warsaw, 2015; Mekelle, 2018) with papers on aspects of Amharic grammar.

Woyzero Haregewoin Kebede

Disciplines: lexicography
Broad research areas: dictionary making(in Ethiopian languages)  
Specific research areas:  writing both monolingual and multilingual dictionaries for Ethiopian languages
Periods: Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Languages:  English (good), Amharic (native fluency)
Position:  University professor or lecturer
Degree:  MA
Degree from:  Academy of Ethiopian languages and cultures,Addis Ababa University
Country from:  Ethiopia
Country in:  Ethiopia        Institution at:     Addis Ababa University,Ethiopia
Website in: 
Bio:  Haregewoin Kebede is a lexicographer and Amharic language teacher for non Ethiopians with a long years of experience. She specializes in writing monolingual and multilingual dictionaries of Ethiopian languages. Her educational background includes a BA in linguistics and MA in documentary linguistics from Addis Ababa University. Currently she is engaged in preparing an electronic version of the Amharic language dictionary which was published in 1993 E.C.

Mr. Bereket Wondimu

Disciplines: Media, Public Relations and Communication
Broad research areas: Media, Public Relations and Communication
Specific research areas: Media and Public relations
Periods:  Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Languages:  English (good), Amharic (good)
Position:  University professor or lecturer, Journalist/Writer, PhD candidate at Addis Ababa University
Degree:  PhD, MA
Degree from:  Addis Ababa University
Country from:  Ethiopia
Country in:  Ethiopia        Institution at:     MA from Jimma University in Public Relations and Corporate Communication and PhD candidate at Addis Ababa University
Website in:  https://mediawatchjournal.in/perception-and-practice-of-public-relations-among-municipality-employees-in-ethiopia-4/
Bio:  Bereket Wondimu was a lecturer in the Department of Journalism and Communication at Hawassa University, Ethiopia. Currently, he is a PhD candidate at Addis Ababa University in media and communication.His areas of interest in research and teaching include media, public relations, corporate communications and advertising.

Mr. Gabeyehu (Gabe) Adugna

Disciplines: Library/Information Studies
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean art: twentieth century, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: twenty-first century, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: film, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural history, Ethiopian/Eritrean history of international/world relations, Horn of Africa history, Ethiopian/Eritrean manuscript studies
Specific research areas: African/Ethiopian diaspora – Migration & culinary history
Periods:  Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Languages:  English (good), Amharic (native fluency), French (good)
Position:  University staff or administrator, Librarian
Degree:  MA, MLIS
Degree from:  Boston University Libraries
Country from:  Ethiopia
Country in:  United States: East Coast       Institution at:     University of Maryland – College Park
Website in:  http://www.bu.edu/library/profile/gabeyehu-gabe-adugna/
Bio:  Gabeyehu (Gabe) Adugna is the Subject Liaison Librarian for African Studies at Boston University. Prior to this position, he worked as Librarian for the Community College of Baltimore County, for Clinical Social Work Institute in Washington, DC. Before moving to the U.S., he worked as Librarian/Documentalist for a number of international NGOs in Geneva, Switzerland. He started his career in librarianship in the 1980s by establishing a library/resources center at Ethiopian National Meteorological Services Agency after receiving Diploma in Library Science from Addis Ababa University. He has a Bachelor of Arts and a Master’s of Library Science from University of Maryland, College Park.

Ms. Fanos Tsegaye

Disciplines: Religion
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology
Specific research areas: Ethiopic liturgy
Periods: Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE), Early Modern (1500-1800 CE)
Languages: English (native fluency), Amharic (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez, Greek and Coptic (Research Languages)
Position: PhD candidate in Systematic Theology at St. Mary’s Divinity School, University of St. Andrews.
Country from: Ethiopia
Country in: United Kingdom

She is currently studying the Christological developments and origins of prayers addressed to Christ in Ethiopic liturgy. Her broader research interests include pre-Nicene Christology, particularly its Christian origins, as well as patristic theology on prayer, worship, and Christian identity formation. She is originally from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She completed her MA in Biblical and Theological Studies and MTH at Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology.

Ms. Anna Wells

Disciplines: History, Religion
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: pre-1200, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1200-1500, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural history
Specific research areas: gender in Ge’ez hagiographies
Periods:  Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE)
Languages:  English (native fluency), French (good), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Position:  Graduate student
Degree:  PhD
Degree from:  Baylor University
Country from:  United States
Country in:  United States: Southern         

Institution at:     Baylor University (PhD, MA, and BA)

Bio:  Anna Wells is a PhD student in the Religion department at Baylor University. Her research focuses on the representations of gender in Ge’ez hagiographies from the medieval period. Most recently she presented a paper entitled “Through the Words of a Woman: Conversion Narratives in The Book of the Saints of the Ethiopian Church.”

Ato Mehari Zemelak Worku

Disciplines: Literature, Religion, Linguistics
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean manuscript studies
Specific research areas: Ethiopian Theology, Abba Giorgis of Sagla
Periods:  Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE), Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Languages:  English (good), Amharic (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez, Syriac, Arabic, Hebrew and Coptic
Position:  Graduate student
Degree:  EOTC Traditional Education, MA
Degree from:  The Catholic University of America
Country from:  Ethiopia
Country in:  United States: East Coast       Institution at:     Addis Ababa Unviersity, The Catholic Unviersity of America
Website in:  https://cua.academia.edu/MehariZemelakWorku
Bio:  Mehari is currently a PhD student at The Catholic University of America in the Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures. He earned an MA degree from the same department in the study of Languages and Literatures of Christian Near East. He also earned MA degree in African Languages and Applied Linguistics from Addis Ababa University. Ethiopian liturgy, Ethiopian mysticism, and Ethiopian cuisine are his passions.

Ms.  Hewan Semon Marye

Disciplines: Literature, History, Music, Anthropology
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Amharic, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature in European languages, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1800-1900, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1900-1950, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1951-1974, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1974-1992, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1993 to present, Ethiopian/Eritrean history 1900 to present, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural history, Ethiopian/Eritrean ethnohistory or historical anthropology, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural anthropology
Specific research areas: Popular culture, Nationalism
Periods:  Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE), Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Languages:  English (native fluency), Amharic (native fluency), French (good), German (good), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Position:  Graduate student
Degree:  MA
Degree from:  Hiob Ludolf Centre for Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies
Country from:  Ethiopia
Country in:  Germany       Institution at:     MA – Oxford University
Website in: 
Bio:  Hewan is an Ethiopian doctoral student at the HLCEES in Hamburg. She studies humor and politics in 20th century Ethiopia, contemporary popular culture, and Ethiopia since the decline of the Gonderine kingdom. She has studied Ge’ez for two years. 

Mr. Ethan Michael Key

Disciplines: History
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1600-1800, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1800-1900, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1900-1950, Horn of Africa history
Specific research areas: Bible translation; literature; missions; Leeqaa Naqamtee; Oromo worldview; relations to land; Wallaggaa; accommodation, negotiation, and resistance in periods of expansion
Periods:  Early Modern (1500-1800 CE), Nineteenth Century (1800-1900 CE), Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE)
Languages:  English (native fluency), Amharic (good), Italian (good), Oromo (good), Arabic (2 years); Italian (1 year); Amharic (2 years, friends); Oromo (friends and advisor); Tigrinya (friends)
Position:  Graduate student
Degree:  PhD
Degree from:  Boston University, History
Country from:  United States
Country in:  United States: East Coast       Institution at:     Boston University
Website in:  https://www.bu.edu/history/profile/ethan-key/
Bio:  Originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee, Ethan Key has an MA in world history from Georgia State University. Now he is working on a PhD in African history at Boston University. In Boston, he is studying the Horn of Africa, primarily in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Previously he has done research on the impact and legacy of Onesimos Nasib as a translator and teacher, especially in the Wallaggaa area.

Mr. Negasi Gidey

Disciplines: Economics and theology
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Cultural Economic issues
Specific research areas: Fiction Book In Geez Language
Periods:  I am working for the revival of Geez language for last 10 years
Languages:  English (good), Amharic (native fluency), Tigrinya (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Position:  Independent scholar, Priest/Pastor, Journalist/Writer
Degree:  MA
Degree from:  Religious Service
Country from:  Ethiopia
Country in:  South Korea Institution at:     Mekelle University,Addis Ababa Universty, Tsukuba University/Japan/
Website in: 
Bio:  Negasi Gidey studied in the education system of the Ethiopian Orthodox church. He has an MA degree in applied economic modeling and forecasting at Addis Ababa University. He worked at the national bank of Ethiopia. He has graduated with a BA degree in theology. He has a degree from University of Tsukuba, Japan in economic policy. He has worked as researcher in private companies. He is living in South Korea. He has have written a novel in Ge’ez language, with more than 328 pages, probably the first novel written in this language. His main motive for writing was to show the current generation concrete evidence that the language is yet alive; to encourage their appreciation of indigenous knowledge and their utilization of it; and to reduce the stigmatization of this language because it is attached to a specific religion. Therefore, he wrote a secular book to drive any interested researchers to study the language. This work is a step forward for the Ge’ez literature.

Ato Addisu Hailu

Disciplines: Literature
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature in European languages, East African Literature
Specific research areas: Colonialist discourses against Ethiopia
Periods:  Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE)
Languages:  English (good), Amharic (native fluency), Tigrinya (good), Oromo (good)
Position:  University professor or lecturer, * PhD candidate, Addis Ababa University
Degree:  MA, PhD candidate at Addis Ababa University
Degree from:  Debre Berhan University, Department of English Language and Literature
Country from:  Ethiopia
Country in:  Ethiopia        Institution at:     MA, Addis Ababa University and BA, Hawassa University
Website in: 
Bio:  Addisu was born and raised in Jimma town, the Western part of Ethiopia in 1987. After his primary and secondary education, he joined Hawassa University and earned a BA degree in “Foreign Language and Literature”. He served as a graduate assistant at Aksum University for two years and joined Addis Ababa University for his MA education. After receiving an MA degree in “English Literature”, he went back to Aksum University to serve for two years before joining Debre Berhan University. After a couple of year’s service in the new institution, he returned to Addis Ababa University for his PhD education in the department of “English Literature”. Though his area of interest is Eastern African Literature, he writes specifically on Ethiopian Literature in both Amharic and English. Currently, he has a paper accepted for publication by the East African Literary and Cultural Studies Journal in the Tailor & Francis group. This paper deals with the philosophical questions of the absurdity of life manifested in the poems of Eshetu Chole. Beyond this, he is writing research on colonialist discourse against Ethiopia, in addition to his PhD project entitled “Intertextual Dialogue in the Novels of Ngugi wa Thiogo.”

Other Ethiopian/Eritrean Humanities Studies Scholars (who are important in the field but have yet to fill out the form for this page)

Prof. Marie Laure Derat
Prof. F.X. Fauvelle
Dr. Ekaterina Gusarova
Dr. Valeria Sevenova
Prof. Serge Frantsouzoff
Ms. Awet Andemicael
Ms. Heeyeon Kim
Dr. Rahel Fronda
Mr. Jeremy R. Brown
Dr. Habte (Michael) Kidane
Dr. Kate Cowcher
Prof. Jonathan Miran
Dr. Jan Zahorik
Dr. Elsa Aimé-González
Ms. Carla Hung
Dr. Emana Tucho Dano
Prof. Jane Plastow
Dr. Timothy B. Sailors

Interested Parties

Ato Henok Yizengaw Demisse             

Disciplines: Literature, Art, Linguistics            

Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Amharic, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: music, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1800-1900, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1900-1950, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1951-1974          

Specific research areas: Amharic  Language and Literature, Indigenous Knowledge management system in EOTC traditional schools and scholars, Political Novels and state formation experiments in early twenty century Amharic Novels and others.                  

Periods:Nineteenth Century (1800-1900 CE), Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE), Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)             

Languages:  English (good), Amharic (native fluency), Ethiopic/Ge`ez   

Position: Independent scholar               

Country: From Ethiopia, lives in Ethiopia               

Henok Yizengaw studied Foreign Language and literature, Political Science & International Relations, and  Documentary Linguistics and Culture at Addis Ababa University. His studies indigenous knowledge and endangered languages and has conducted research for the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, universities, private organizations, and consultant firms.   

Dr. Ian Christie-Miller

Specific research areas: Imaging Early Books; First books printed in Ge’ez and Baltic Languages
Languages: English (native fluency), French (good)
Period: Early Modern (1500-1800)
Position: Independent scholar
Country: From UK, born in Sri Lanka; lives in UK
Christie-Miller received his PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London in 1997 with a doctorate titled A Critical Analysis of Jean Thenaud’s Kabbalistic ms. Arsenal 5061. His BA (Hons.) is from the London School of Theology, 1981-82, in Biblical Aramaic; his Dip. Theology from Trinity College, Bristol 1979-81 in Greek & Hebrew. He has published Traicté de la Cabale (2007), Champion-Slatkine, Éditions Slatkine in the collection Textes de la Renaissance. He developed the Early Book Imaging System.

Mr. Marco Vigano

Disciplines:Heritage Management
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1200-1500, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: 1600-1800, Ethiopian/Eritrean historical archaeology, Ethiopian/Eritrean environmental studies (ethnoecology)
Period: Middle Ages (1000-1500 CE)
Languages: English (good), Amharic (good), French (good), Italian (native fluency), Spanish, other African languages
Position: Assistant prof. of Development issues at Addis Ababa University and of Valuation and other subjects at the Italian College, Addis Ababa.
Country: From Italy, lives in Ethiopia
He is a remote sensing expert. He finds new or overlooked archaeological sites in Africa and Mediterranean Europe via Space Archaeology, and strives to preserve them as a tourism resource. He directs an Italian and an Ethiopian NGO related to preservation of cultural and natural heritage sites. He is an environmental activist.

Rev. Deacon Gabra ‘Agzi’aabhir Jr. (Sarsby)

Disciplines: History, Philology, Religion, Linguistics, Anthropology, Geography
Broad research areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Ge`ez/Ethiopic, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in other African languages, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature in European languages, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: ancient (pre-1200), Ethiopian/Eritrean art: medieval (1200-1500), Ethiopian/Eritrean art: early modern (1500-1900), Ethiopian/Eritrean religion and theology, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: prehistory, Ethiopian/Eritrean history: pre-1200, Ethiopian/Eritrean historical archaeology, Ethiopian/Eritrean linguistics, Ethiopian/Eritrean cultural anthropology, Ethiopian/Eritrean geography, Ethiopian/Eritrean manuscript studies, Comparative Studies in Language (Linguists), History &c.
Specific research areas: (1) Aethiopic Comparative Philology & Linguistics (2) Literary Philology on Unknown Hagiographies (3) Comparative and Ancient Aethiopian History & commerce (4) Aethiopian Geography in Classical times (5) Comparative Aethiopian Religion and Government in the Classical and Medieval period
Languages: English (native fluency), Spanish, Old Scots, Anglo-Saxon, Biblical Hebrew, Tigrinya, Amharic, Ethiopic/Ge`ez
Period: Pre-history (pre-1000 BCE), Ancient (1000 BCE to 1000 CE)
Position: Priest/Pastor, Independent scholar
Country: From Belize, West Caribbean, Central America, lives in United Kingdom
He is a researcher of two decades on Semitic Languages, History and Geography, and a fully ordained deacon in the EOTC for over a decade (serving also the Coptic, and Indo-Syriac Churches). He was born in the Caribbean (but also grew up in Germany, Holland and England), but is culturally, religiously and academically attached to [East] Africa and its humanities, visiting on research and pilgrimage to Aethiopia annually if possible for several months at time. He teaches differing Aethiopian humanities in several Aethiopian Orthodox platforms or institutions, both in Aethiopia and the UK, and lectures on the same outside of the context of the EOTC. He publishes books in various disciplines and on topics neglected in scholarship, and participates in conferences pertaining to Aethiopia.

Mr. Dexter Story

Discipline: Music
Broad Research Areas: Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Amharic, Ethiopian/Eritrean literature/folklore in Tigrinya, Ethiopian/Eritrean art: music
Specific Research Areas: Guayla Music of Eritrea: Sounds of Liberation and Modernity
Periods: Twentieth-Century (1900-2000 CE), Twenty-first Century (2000-present CE)
Languages: English (native fluency), French (native fluency)
Profession: Graduate student, University of California, Los Angeles (Herb Alpert School of Music) – Ethnomusicology
Country: From United States; lives in United States: West Coast
Dexter Story is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, music director, producer and music industry creative based in Los Angeles. Story currently consults as Artivist in Residence / Event Producer at Community Coalition of South Los Angeles, a community organizing and advocacy non-profit, and he is a 2017-2019 cohort with the APAP USC Leadership Fellows Program. As a recent M.A. graduate from UCLA’s African Studies department, Story recently released an acclaimed East Africa-influenced album entitled Bahir on Soundway Records, and he is entering the Ethnomusicology PhD program at UCLA Fall 2019 as a 4-year Eugene V. Cota-Robles fellow. Story ultimately plans to write, lecture and research at the university level, and release derivative recordings that support his academic research. http://www.dexterstory.com

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