Speakers
Nicla De Zorzi
Nicla De Zorzi is an Assistant Professor of Assyriology at the Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of Vienna. She received her Ph.D. in Assyriology from the University Ca’ Foscari Venice Italy in 2011. In 2018, De Zorzi was granted an ERC Starting Grant for the project "Repetition, parallelism and creativity: an inquiry into the construction of meaning in Ancient Mesopotamian literature and erudition” (REPAC). De Zorzi's research interests focus on the study of Ancient Mesopotamian scholarship, especially divination, Ancient Mesopotamia intellectual history, and Human-Animal studies in the Ancient Near East.
Robert Parker
Robert Parker is Emeritus Professor of Ancient History at New College, University of Oxford, and Director and Principal Investigator of The Lexicon of Greek Personal Names (LGPN). He has spent a distinguished career at the University of Oxford, serving from 1979-1996 as Tutor in Greek and Latin languages at Oriel College, before being appointed to his current posts. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1998. Parker’s research interest covers the study Greek society from an anthropological perspective; in particular, he is interested in how the Greeks' thought and behaviour was shaped by their religious beliefs.
Federico Santangelo
Federico Santangelo is Professor in Ancient History and Director of Research at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Newcastle University. Santangelo first took his B.A. degree at Bologna, where he studied at the Collegio Superiore, and holds a Ph.D. from University College London. He works and publishes on the political and intellectual history of the late Republic, on Roman religion, on problems of local and municipal administration in the Roman world, and on aspects of the history of classical scholarship.
Elisabeth Sawerthal
Elisabeth Sawerthal is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Theology & Religious Studies, King’s College London. Her current research explores the relationship between divination and power in the Hebrew Bible and in ancient Egyptian texts. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Archaeology from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London and obtained her M.A. in Biblical Studies with focus on language and literature from King’s College London. She has worked on archaeological field projects in Sudan and Israel on behalf of the British Museum and Tel Aviv University and is currently the Librarian of the Palestine Exploration Fund.
Edward O. D. Love
Edward O. D. Love is a D.Phil. candidate in Oriental Studies (Egyptology) at the University of Oxford. Following the completion of a B.A. (2010) and M.St. (2013) in Oriental Studies (Egyptology - with a focus in Demotic and Coptic) at the University of Oxford, he undertook two research years at the Ägyptologisches Institut of the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg under the supervision of Joachim Quack. From September 2018, Love is a contributing Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter (Postdoctoral Researcher) to the project "The Coptic Magical Papyri: Vernacular Religion in Late Antique Egypt", under the direction of Korshi Dosoo and in collaboration with Markéta Preininger Svobodova, at the JMU Würzburg.
Andreas Winkler
Andreas Winkler is a Departmental Lecturer in Egyptology and Coptic at the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford. Winkler has taught and conducted research at, for instance, UC Berkeley (CA), Brown University (Providence, RI), before being appointed to his current post. His research focuses on Egyptian history from the first millennium BC until Late Antique times, history of science in ancient Egypt and Mediterranean world, specifically astronomy and astrology. He also researches the social and economic history of the period with a particular emphasis on the temple as an economic and administrative entity.
Jonathan Stökl
Jonathan Stökl is a Senior Lecturer in Hebrew Bible / Old Testament at the King’s College London. He has studied theology at the Kirchliche Hochschule Bethel (Bielefeld) and the Humboldt University in Berlin before completing two Masters and a D.Phil. at University of Oxford and the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. Since then, he has worked at St. John's College at he University of Cambridge, at the History department at UCL and in Area Studies in Leiden University under the umbrella of the ERC project By the Waters of Babylon. Jonathan joined King’s in 2013. Dr Stökl's research focuses on the history, religion and languages of ancient Judaism, Judean and Israelite Identity, particularly in the post-exilic period, the Hebrew Bible and the world in which it developed, prophecy and archaeology.
James Little
James Little is a D.Phil. candidate in Oriental Studies (Arabic and Islamic Studies) at the University of Oxford. He first obtained his B.A. at Monash University (Melbourne), to then complete his M.Phil. in Islamic Studies & History (Oxford) in 2018. His current research specialises in early Islamic history, with an interest in the development of early Arabic literary traditions.
Ashton Ng 黃敬凱
Ashton Ng 黃敬凱 is completing his M.St. in Traditional China at the University of Oxford. In October 2019, Ashton will be embarking on his Ph.D. in Chinese History at the University of Cambridge under a Cambridge Trust Scholarship. Ashton graduated with the highest possible honours from Peking University, where he read Classical Chinese as a Chinese Government Scholar. He is currently researching on the Hanfei Zi's interpretation of the Laozi as a book of military and political stratagems.
Xiao Liqian 肖力千
Xiao Liqian 肖力千 is completing his Ph.D. in Chinese Philosophy at Peking University. He holds a B.S. in Thermodynamic Engineering at Zhejiang University (2005) and a M.S. in Software Engineering at Peking University (2007). Xiao has just received an offer for a postdoctoral position in the Institute of Philosophy and Religion, Minzu University of China. His main research interests are ancient Chinese philosophy, divination, Chinese traditional medicine and daoism.
Flaminia Pischedda
Flaminia Pischedda is a D.Phil. candidate in Oriental Studies (Chinese) at the University of Oxford. She pursued a B.A. (2013) and a M.A. (2017) in Oriental Languages and Civilizations at “La Sapienza” University of Rome. Before obtaining her degrees, she spent long periods of time in China studying modern Chinese at Beijing Foreign Studies University and Beijing Language and Culture University (2012-2014), and classical Chinese at Peking University (2015-2016). Pischedda spent the fall semester 2016 as visiting student at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, attending a course in Chinese palaeography, before arriving in Oxford in 2018, where she is currently conducting a Doctorate research on Yijing-related excavated manuscripts.
Iris Tomé Valencia
Iris Tomé Valencia is a D.Phil. candidate in Oriental Studies (Japanese) at the University of Oxford. She received her B.A. in Asian and African Studies from the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM), followed by an M.A. Theatre Studies at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), and an M.A. Japanese Literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). She is currently affiliated to The Queen’s College (Oxford), and her D.Phil. thesis focuses on the matters of domesticity, publicity, and literary reception in Heian period Japanese diaries.
Matthias Hayek
Matthias Hayek is Associate Professor in Japanese Studies at Paris-Diderot University. He studied Philosophy at Toulouse Le Mirail University and at Paris IV-Sorbonne University, and Japanese language and civilization at INALCO (National Institute for Oriental Languages, Paris). Prof. Hayek obtained his Ph.D. at INALCO in 2008, and was first appointed temporary Assistant Professor at Paris-Diderot University. He became an Associate Professor in 2009. Since then, he has been involved in various scientific venues in Europe and abroad, dealing with divination, the calendar or strange phenomena in Japan.
Kenneth G. Zysk
Kenneth G. Zysk is Professor of Indology at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen. He obtained his M.A., Asian Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1976. He completed his first Ph.D. in Ancient Indian History and Civilisations at the Australian National University (Canberra) in 1981 and a D.Philos. in Indology, at the University of Oslo in 2006.
Bernhard Maier
Bernhard Maier is Professor of Religious Studies and the European History of Religions in the University of Tübingen. He has studied Comparative Religion, Comparative Indo-European Philology, Celtic and Semitic Philology in Freiburg, Aberystwyth, Bonn and London. He did both his Ph.D. and his Habilitation (second doctorate) in the University of Bonn in 1989 and 1998 respectively. After holding a Heisenberg Scholarship from the German National Research Foundation (DFG), he was Reader and Professor in Celtic in the University of Aberdeen (2004-2006). In 2006 he took up his current post. His main research interests are the religious history of the Celtic-speaking peoples from pre-Christian antiquity to the present and the history of Religious Studies in the 18th and 19th centuries.
William F. Ryan
William F. Ryan is Emeritus Professor and Honorary Fellow at The Warburg Institute. He read Russian at Oriel College, Oxford, and has worked as a Russian dictionary editor for the Clarendon Press, assistant curator at the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, lecturer at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, and Academic Librarian at the Warburg Institute (School of Advanced Study, University of London). He is a Fellow of the British Academy and DrPhil hon. causa Russian Academy of Sciences. He has published in the fields of lexicography, history of magic and science in Russia, Russian maritime history. He is a former president of the Hakluyt Society and the Folklore Society.