Having followed an academic path that led me from Egyptology and Coptic studies to Syriac and Armenian studies, I am interested in wider processes of transmission of knowledge in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and beyond, especially when this transmission involved translation (including but not limited to translations from Syriac to Armenian, to Coptic and to Arabic, and from Greek to Syriac, to Armenian, to Coptic and to Arabic).
During my MA at the Université Catholique de Louvain (2008-2010) and my PhD research at Ghent University (2010-2014), my main focus became late ancient and medieval Eastern Christian historiography in Greek, Syriac, Arabic and Armenian, in particular from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. On 8 May 2014 I successfully defended my dissertation on the sources of the Anonymous Syriac Chronicle up to the Year 1234 after examination by David Taylor (University of Oxford), Andrea Schmidt (Université Catholique de Louvain), Muriel Debié (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris), Maria Conterno (Ghent University) and Filip Van Tricht (Ghent University).
My research interests include a wide range of topics, most notably Syro-Armenian studies, the Syriac reception of Greek historiography, the Syriac sources of the Arabic chronicle of Agapius of Mabbug (c. 942). In October 2016 onwards, I started a three-year fellowship of the Research Foundation of Flanders (FWO) in the Department of History at Ghent University, studying the Armenian reception of the Syriac non-Chalcedonian poet Jacob of Serugh (d. 521) and his writings. In 2018, I was awarded a postdoctoral research fellowship by the Center for the Study of Christianity at the Hebrew University to spend the academic year 2018-2019 in Jerusalem to work on this project there. From September 2019 onwards I shall continue with the last year of this FWO-project, working towards my next project in the emerging field of Syro-Armenian studies.
