Professeure d'Histoire romaine, Université Marie et Louis Pasteur, Besançon

Audrey Becker completed her Ph.D. in Ancient History at the University of Strasbourg in 2006. Her research focuses on imperial power from Constantine to Justinian and on social sciences as applied to late antiquity. Her publications include Les relations diplomatiques romano-barbares en Occident: Acteurs, fonctions, modalités (Paris: De Boccard, 2013) and numerous articles about the diplomatic relations between Rome and Barbarian kingdoms in late antiquity. Her most recent book, Dieu, le souverain et la cour Stratégies et rituels de légitimation du pouvoir impérial et royal dans l’Antiquité tardive et au haut Moyen Âge (2022), was published in the series Scripta Antiqua by the University of Bordeaux. 

https://ista.univ-fcomte.fr/cb-profile/abecker

Chercheur en islamologie et histoire du monde musulman, Institut français du Proche-Orient (Ifpo)

Mehdi Berriah has been a researcher in Islamic Studies and Islamic History at the French Institute in the Near East (Ifpo) since September 2023. Prior to this, he taught for several years at various institutions, including Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Sciences Po Paris (Reims campus), Grenoble-Alpes University, and Paris 8 Vincennes–Saint-Denis. His research focuses on medieval and modern Islamic thought and theology, Ibn Taymiyya, jihad ideology and Islamic laws of war as well as the political, social, military and religious history of Islamic medieval world. He has published several peer-reviewed articles on these topics. He currently leads a research project titled “Jihad in the Middle Ages: Texts, Contexts and Practices (7th–15th century)”, funded by the Central Office of Worship (Bureau central des cultes) under the French Ministry of the Interior (2022 call for projects: “Islam, Religion, and Society”). He has co-edited several collective volumes, including Professional Mobility in Islamic Societies (700–1750): New Concepts and Approaches (Brill, 2021); Jihad and fitna : penser et concevoir la guerre dans le Mašriq médiéval (VIIe-XVIe siècles) (Annales Islamologiques 56, 2022); and most recently, The Medieval Jihad: Texts, Theories and Practices (Ifao, 2025). He is also the author of the monograph L’art de la guerre chez les Mamelouks (1250–1375): stratégies et tactiques (Brill, 2024), which was awarded the Verbruggen Prize (2024 edition) by the De Re Militari Society for Medieval Military History. 

https://www.ifporient.org/mehdi-berriah/

Maître de Conférences, École Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris 

• 2017 : Maître de conférences de l’EHESS, Paris, France.

• 2016-2017 : Enseignant-chercheur contractuel et co-responsable (avec Joachim Kurtz) de la coordination du projet européen HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) intitulé « East Asian Uses of the European Past : Tracing Braided Chronotypes ». Quatre universités européennes participent au projet : l’Université autonome de Madrid, l’Université de Zurich, l’Université de Heidelberg et la London School of Economics.

• 2013-2016 : Enseignant-chercheur contractuel et coordinateur scientifique du groupe de recherche « Towards a Global History of Concepts » (MC5) (avec Joachim Kurtz, Rudolf Wagner, Monica Juneja et Dhruv Raina) dans le Cluster of Excellence « Asia and Europe in a Global Context », Faculté de Philosophie, Université de Heidelberg, Allemagne.

• 2012 : Soutenance de la thèse de doctorat « L’Art politique du texte. Savoirs lettrés et pouvoir impérial dans la Chine du sud aux Ve - VIe siècles ». 

https://www.ehess.fr/fr/personne/pablo-blitstein

Ricercatore a tempo determinato en Histoire médiévale, Università degli Studi, Firenze 

Marco Cristini obtained his PhD in Classics at Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa, Italy) in 2020. He subsequently held a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies “Migration and Mobility in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages” (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen) and at the Istituto Italiano di Storia Antica in Rome. He is currently Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Florence. He published three monographs and several papers about Procopius, Cassiodorus, Jordanes and late antique diplomacy. His work on the foreign policy of the Ostrogoths won the International Award “Giuliano Crifò” for outstanding and original Ph.D. dissertations, awarded by Accademia Romanistica Costantiniana, and a research award conferred by Associazione Internazionale di Studi Tardoantichi. While his speciality is Ostrogothic Italy and late antique diplomacy, he also studies the works of Procopius of Caesarea and Cassiodorus, as well as early medieval North Africa. Currently, he is working on a monograph on African Latin Christianity from the Vandals to the Almohads.

https://cercachi.unifi.it/p-doc2-0-0-A-3f2c372a342e2f-0.html

Profesor Ayudante, Ciencias Jurídicas, Universidad de Alcalá.

Aitor Fernandez Delgado graduated in Antique and Medieval History in 2009) at the University of Deusto (Bilbao).  Master's Degree in History and Sciences of Antiquity (2009-2010) at the Universities Autónoma de Madrid and Complutense de Madrid.  PHD Student at the University Autónoma de Madrid (2010-2011) and University of Alcalá (2011-2017).  FPI Scholar of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (2012-2016).  FPI Researcher of the History and Philosophy Department at the University of Alcalá (2012-2016).  PHD Degree in History, Written Culture and Thought at the University of Alcalá (10th May, 2017). 

https://www.uah.es/es/estudios/profesor/Aitor-Fernandez-Delgado/

Chargé de recherche CNRS, Centre d’études sud-asiatiques et himalayennes.

Après une formation à l’Université de Louvain en philologie classique, puis en histoire et philologie orientales et, enfin, une thèse de doctorat (2009) portant sur le discours royal de la dynastie des Pallava (Inde du Sud, IVe-IXe siècles), Emmanuel Francis a été chercheur au Centre for the Study of Manuscript Culture (CSMC) à Hambourg, avant de rejoindre, en 2012, le CNRS, au sein du Centre d’Études de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud (CEIAS). Depuis, il étudie sources épigraphiques et manuscrites, en langues tamoule et sanskrite, pour écrire l’histoire sociale et culturelle de la langue tamoule et celle de l’hindouisme en pays tamoul, à l’époque pré-moderne.

https://cesah.ehess.fr/membres/emmanuel-francis

William Gaines Twyman Professor of History Emeritus, Rice University, Houston. 

Michael Maas defended his thesis in 1982 at Berkeley. After teaching at Berkeley and Darthmouth College, he was offered a position at Rice University in Houston where he spent his entire career, becoming Professor of History in 2003 and the William Gaines Twyman Professor of History in 2016. He was Research Fellow at Kings College, University of London, Department of Classics in 1988-89, member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 2000 - 2001, Director of the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies at Rome in 2005-2006, Director of Byzantine Studies at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Center, Harvard University in Washington D.C.in 2015-2016 and guest research director at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in 2017.

 
https://profiles.rice.edu/faculty/michael-r-maas

Professeure Junior, Université de Lille

Ekaterina Nechaeva obtained her PhD from the University of Siena (Italy, 2007). Her BA and MA in the history of ancient Greece and Rome (2001) are from the University of Saint Petersburg, Russia. Having worked at the Hermitage Museum as a researcher and educator for almost ten years (1999 and 2010), she left Russia in 2010 and continued her research activities in international contexts.

Since then she has been awarded a number of prestigious fellowships, among them the Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Studies fellowship (Washington DC, 2013-2014) and the EURIAS MSCA-COFUND Pogramme-FP7 Fellowship carried out at Collegium Helveticum (Zurich, 2016-2017). Dr. Nechaeva has held postdoctoral research positions at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (Paris, 2011-2012) and the University of Tübingen (DFG-Kollegforschergruppe « Migration und Mobilität in Spätantike und Frühmittelalter », 2017-2018). She was a bibliographic consultant at the research library of the American Academy in Rome (2010-2014) and a program coordinator for the Joseph Brodsky Foundation (Rome, 2014-2015). She has also been a research associate at the University of Geneva (2015-2016) and the University of Bern (2016-2017).

In 2019, Dr Nechaeva joined the HALMA laboratory in Lille, first as a postdoctoral researcher within the DANUBIUS project (until September 2020), then as the principal investigator of the EX-PATRIA project and as a Junior Professor.

https://pro.univ-lille.fr/ekaterina-nechaeva.

Guest Researcher at the Universiteit Leiden

Khodadad Rezakhani is a historian of late antique and early medieval West and Central Asia, concentrating on the Sasanian empire. He is currently the Principle Investigator of the project A City of Many Cities: Ctesiphon and Baghdad (funded by Gerda Henkel Stiftung) and housed at Leiden University, Netherlands. 

Main publications:

K. Rezakhani, ReOrienting the Sasanians: East Iran in Late Antiquity, Edinburgh University Press, 2017; John Hyland and K. Rezakhani (eds), Brill’s Handbook to War in Ancient Iranian Empires, Brill, 2025.

https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/khodadad-rezakhani#tab-1

Wissenchaftlicher Mitarbeiter, Alte Geschichte, Helmut-Schmidt-Universität

Rocco Selvaggi studied Classical Philology and Ancient History at the “Roma Tre” University. He obtained his PhD in Ancient History at the University of Hamburg in 2019. He later held the position of Academic Coordinator of the RomanIslam - Center for Comparative Empire and Transcultural Studies, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and based at the University of Hamburg. Since 2024 he is Research Associate and Lecturer at the “Helmut Schmidt” University in Hamburg. His main research topic is the 5th century, especially the relationships between the Germanic peoples and the Western Roman Empire. Currently, he is working on Vandal and Suebic diplomacy. 

 
https://www.hsu-hh.de/hisalt/wissenschaftlichemitarbeiter

Profesora Titular de Historia Antigua, Departamento de Estudios Clásicos, Universidad del Pais Vasco / Euskal Herrico Unibertsitatea, 

Ses recherches portent sur la République romaine, avec un accent particulier sur le développement de la mémoire politique au sein de l'aristocratie romaine et l'étude de la diplomatie entre les Romains et les communautés qui faisaient partie de leur empire. Elle a en particulier dirigé quatre projets de recherche nationaux sur la diplomatie romaine et a consacré une partie de son travail de chercheur à l'étude de l'histoire ancienne du Pays basque. Elle a été professeur invité à l'Université de Paris I-Panthéon-Sorbonne ainsi qu'à l'University of Austin, Tx., cette dernière grâce à une bourse Fulbright pour chercheurs seniors. 

Elle a publié notamment "La elaboración de la tradición sobre los Cornelii Scipiones (1998), « Diplomatic Mobility and Persuasion between Rome and the West (I-II AD) » (2017), « Marseille in the Roman political-diplomatic imaginary » (2018); "Algunas sombras en la diplomacia romana" (2020); ‘Women’s Mediation and Peace Diplomacy. Augustan Women through the Looking Glass’

(2024); "Tarpeya, arqueología de una traición" (2024).

https://www.ehu.eus/es/web/graduak/grado-historia/profesorado?p_redirect=fichaPDI&p_idp=5737

Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter, Institut für Byzantinistik, Byzantinische Kunstgeschichte und Neogräzistik 

Martin Vucetic studied Byzantine Studies, Medieval and Modern History, and Political Science in Mainz, Glasgow, and Vienna. He earned his doctorate at the University of Münster with a dissertation on the meetings between Byzantine emperors and other rulers. After holding research positions in projects on Byzantine administrative and legal history in Mainz and Göttingen, he is now a lecturer at the Institute for Byzantine Studies, Byzantine Art History, and Modern Greek Studies at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. There, he recently completed and submitted his habilitation thesis: an edition of the Eisagoge tou nomou, a mid-Byzantine legal text.

https://www.byzantinistik.uni-muenchen.de/personen/wiss_mitarbeiter/martin-vucetic/index.html

Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Felege-Selam Solomon Yirga is a historian of the Late Antique/Early Medieval Near East and Red Sea regions, particularly interested in the study of early Byzantine historiography, and how people who did not live under the Roman empire (particularly post-Roman Copts, Syrians, and medieval/early modern Ethiopians)  remembered it and used its memory to forge their own religious and political identities. He conducts his research through the study of the transmission and reuse of historical and hagiographic texts from Greek into Classical Ethiopic (Gə’əz), Coptic, and Syriac. 

https://history.utk.edu/person/yirga-felege-selam/