GENERAL EDITORS

Christopher Athanasius Faraone is the Springer Professor of the College and the Humanities at the University of Chicago.  His work is primarily concerned with ancient Greek religion and poetry.  He is co-editor with Dirk Obbink of Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion (1991), with D. Dodd of Initiation in Ancient Greek Rituals and Narratives: New Critical Perspectives (2003), with F. Naiden of Ancient Victims, Modern Observers: Reflections on Greek and Roman Sacrifice (2011) and with D. Obbink of The Getty Hexameters: Magic, Poetry and Mystery in Ancient Selinous (2013).  He is the sole author of Talismans and Trojan Horses: Guardian Statues in Ancient Greek Myth and Ritual  (1992), Ancient Greek Love Magic (1999), Vanishing Acts: Deletio Morbi as Speech Act and Visual Design on Ancient Greek Amulets, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplement 115 (2013) and The Transformation of Ancient Greek Amulets in Roman Times (forthcoming) and numerous articles on Ancient Greek magic, poetry and religion.

Sofía Torallas Tovar is Professor in the Depts. of Classics and NELC at the University of Chicago. She obtained her Ph.D. in Classics at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) in 1995. She trained as a papyrologist and a Coptologist at University College London (UCL). Since 2002 she has been the curator of the Roca-Puig collection at the Abadia de Montserrat and has directed the research conducted at the Abbey. She is author and co-author of the four volumes of papyrus editions published since 2006. She participates in international projects concerned with the edition of Coptic texts, such as those on the Gospel of Marc and Shenoute of Atripe. She has participated since 2009 in the Qubbet el Hawa (Assuan) Project of the University of Jaén, and since 2010 in the Swiss Institute’s edition of the Greek and Coptic ostraka excavated in Aswan, Egypt.

USA

Jacco Dieleman is Associate Professor of Egyptology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his training in Egyptology and Comparative Literature at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and the University of Würzburg in Germany. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Leiden in 2003 on a dissertation on the nature and function of bilingualism and translation in two related magic handbooks from Roman Egypt. He has been teaching Egyptology at UCLA since 2003. He was a Visiting Research Scholar at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World of New York University during the academic year 2010-11 and a fellow at the Morphomata Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities of the University of Cologne during the academic year 2014-15. His current research focuses on the transformation of Egyptian scribal culture and ritual in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

Radcliffe G. Edmonds III is the Paul Shorey Professor of Greek in the Department of Greek, Latin, & Classical Studies at Bryn Mawr College. His research focuses on Greek religion and mythology, especially ideas of the underworld and afterlife, as well as on Platonic philosophy, ritual, and magic, and on various topics relating to Orphica, including the Derveni Papyrus and the gold tablets. He has published Myths of the Underworld Journey: Plato, Aristophanes, and the ‘Orphic’ Gold Tablets (Cambridge 2004) and Redefining Ancient Orphism: A Study in Greek Religion (Cambridge 2013). He has also edited The ‘Orphic’ Gold Tablets and Greek Religion: Further Along the Path (Cambridge 2011) and co-edited Plato and the Power of Images (Brill 2017). His study of the category of magic, entitled Drawing Down the Moon: Magic in the Ancient Greco-Roman World, was published in 2019 by Princeton University Press. His next research project, tentatively entitled The Paths of the Dead:  Imagining Death and Afterlife in Ancient Greece, is a study of the ways death and afterlife were imagined in ancient Greek culture, taking account of the inconsistencies and tensions among the multiple ideas of death and afterlife that appear in the different forms of evidence. 

Kelly Holob is a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago Divinity School, a 2022-23 Martin Marty Junior Fellow, and an intern at UChicagoGRAD. In her dissertation entitled “Discourses of Criminality in Early Christianity,” she investigates how ancient understandings of living and dead criminals can help us rethink early martyrdom traditions. Her interests also include Early Christian apologetics, apocryphal literature, Greco-Roman and Egyptian religion, the magical papyri, and capital punishment in the Roman empire and its reception. She has an article forthcoming in Apocrypha on magical words in early Christian narrative and a book chapter on early martyrdom narratives. She received her BA from Reed College in Classics-Religion in 2014, writing her thesis on the hymns Synesius of Cyrene, which received the William T. Lankford III Memorial Humanities Award for Exceptional Thesis, and her MA in Religion from the University of Chicago in 2016.

Jordan Johansen is a postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in the Humanities at the University of Chicago with appointments in the Department of Classics, the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, and the College. She received her PhD in Classics (the Program in the Ancient Mediterranean World) from the University of Chicago in 2022. She is a scholar and teacher of ancient Mediterranean history, culture, and literature with a focus on Greco-Roman Egypt, gender and sexuality, border studies, papyrology, and classical reception. Her current book project, “Flooding Borders: Imagined Spaces between Egypt and Nubia in the Greco-Roman Period,” draws on a diverse range of evidence to re/de/construct the multiplicity of borders accumulated in the physical and imaginary spaces of the Nubian-Egyptian borderlands. She received her BA in History, Anthropology, and Music with a minor in Human Rights from Southern Methodist University and studied Classical Languages at the University of Vermont and the University of Dallas.

Janet H. Johnson is the Morton D. Hull Distinguished Service Professor of Egyptology at the Oriental Institute and Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations of the University of Chicago.  She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations of the University of Chicago in 1972 and became a member of the faculty of the Oriental Institute and the Department of Near Eastern Studies that same year.  She is a specialist in Egyptian language and scripts and is editor of the Chicago Demotic Dictionary.  She wrote her dissertation on the grammar of the Demotic Magical Papyri.  Her current research focuses on the legal and social status of women in ancient Egypt.

EUROPE

Miriam Blanco Cesteros is currently Assistant Professor of Classics at the University Complutense of Madrid (Spain). With a solid background in papyrology and classical philology, in 2017 she received her PhD with a doctoral dissertation on the hymns of the Greco-Egyptian magical papyri, after which she was the recipient of several postdoctoral fellowships in Spain and Italy. Her training in papyrology began with Dr. Alberto Nodar and continued with specialised courses at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and the Università di Pisa, at the G. Vitelli Papyrology Institute in Florence and at the Papyrology School in Lecce (Italy). Her research lines focus on the ritual and cultural formation of Greco-Egyptian magical practitioners, touching on various fields such as magic and religion, literature, alchemy and papyrology from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Eleni Chronopoulou is ‘assegnista di ricerca’ (postdoctoral researcher) in the project Papiri magici greci: revisione ecdotica e analisi lessicale at the Università di Firenze since 2018. She holds a B.A. in Greek Philology, with focus on Classics, from the University of Patras, a B.A. in History and Theory of Art from the Athens School of Fine Arts, and a M.A. in Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Thought from the Pompeu Fabra University. She also attended courses of history and archaeology at the University of Ioannina for a year and papyrology courses at the Leiden Papyrological Institute and the Summer Institute in Papyrology at Princeton University. She defended her Ph.D. on PGM II in 2018 in the Department of Humanities at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, under the supervision of Emilio Suárez de la Torre, Professor of Classics.

Daniela Colomo obtained her first degree in Classics at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, and then completed a DPhil in Greek Papyrology in Oxford. She worked at the University of Leuven and University of Leipzig, and was an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the University of Cologne. She is currently Research Associate at the Faculty of Classics of the University of Oxford, Curator of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri Collection and a member of the team editing the Oxyrhynchus Papyri series. The focus of her research concerns Greek rhetorical papyri – especially handbooks, and schoolbooks. She has also worked on the transmission of Isocrates’ text with focus on the papyrological evidence, taking part in the joint project to produce a new Oxford Classical Texts edition of the entire Isocrates corpus (forthcoming in 2019). She is a member of the editorial board of the series Commentaria et lexica graeca in papyris reperta.

Korshi Dosoo received his doctorate in Ancient History at Macquarie University, Australia. His PhD thesis, “Rituals of Apparition on the Theban Magical Library” was completed in 2015. He is currently junior team leader of the project ‘The Coptic Magical Papyri: Vernacular Religion in Late Roman and Early Islamic Egypt’ at the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg. In 2016 he organized a conference on animals in ancient and medieval magic, the proceedings of which are in the final stages of editing. He has previously been employed as a lecturer in Coptic language and papyrology at the University of Strasbourg (2017-2018), and as a researcher on the Labex RESMED project ‘Les mots de la paix’, and the Australian Research Council projects ‘Knowledge Transfer and Administrative Professionalism in a Pre-Typographic Society: Observing the Scribe at Work in Roman and Early Islamic Egypt’ (Macquarie University) and ‘The Function of Images in magical papyri and artefacts of Ritual Power from Late Antiquity’ (University of Sydney).

Marina Escolano-Poveda is a Lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Liverpool, and a Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the Eberhard-Karls Universität Tübingen, where she is developing the project “The Greek Hermetica as a Product of the Egyptian Priestly Milieu of Graeco-Roman Egypt.” She obtained her PhD in Egyptology at the Johns Hopkins University in 2017 with a dissertation on the representation of the Egyptian priests in the Egyptian and Graeco-Roman literary and paraliterary sources of the Graeco-Roman period, under the supervision of Prof. Richard Jasnow. She is currently revising and expanding the manuscript for its publication as part of the series Studien zur spätägyptischen Religion (Harrassowitz Verlag). She has recently joined the team publishing the Demotic ostraca of Athribis as specialist in astronomical/astrological texts, and is also working on the edition of the Demotic papyri from the Abbey of Montserrat.

Alejandro García Molinos has recently received his Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Valladolid, with a thesis on the divination in the Greek Magical Papyri. He has been a member of research projects on Greek religion, magic and divination at the University of Valladolid. Currently he collaborates with the University Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona). He has been visiting scholar at the Oxford University and the Ohio State University. His research is focused on the ancient Greek magic, especially on the different kinds of divination in the Graeco-Egyptian magic and the relation of the Greek Magical Papyri and the Roman Law.

Marius Gerhardt studied history, classical philology and prehistoric archeology in Halle (Saale) in Germany. Since 2003 he has worked in various papyrus projects at the papyrus collections in Halle, Jena and Leipzig, including a project called “Papyrus Portal”, a search engine for all German papyrus collections. Since 2010 he has been a research fellow of the project “Berliner Papyrusdatenbank (BerlPap)” at the papyrus collection in Berlin. Since 2016 he is the curator of the Greek-Latin section of the papyrus collection in Berlin.

Richard L. Gordon is Honorary Professor (Religionsgeschichte der Antike) in the Institute für Religionswissenschaft and Associate Fellow of the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Research at the University of Erfurt. His main research interest is in social and cultural aspects of religious practice in the Roman Empire. He is a member of the KFG project ‘Religiöse Individualisierung in historischer Perspektive’, directed by Hans Joas, Jörg Rüpke and Martin Mülsow at Erfurt (2007-2017), and of the project ‘Lived Ancient Religion: getting beyond “polis religion” and “cults” in the Roman Empire’ directed by Jörg Rüpke and Rubina Raja (2012-2017), likewise at Erfurt, and was co-director with Francisco Marco Simón of various projects on the practice of magic in the Latin West at the University of Zaragoza (2003-2014). He has published widely on aspects of Graeco-Roman and Graeco-Egyptian magic, and recently organized a conference at Erfurt with Esther Eidinow on comparative witchcraft narratives, the proceedings of which will appear in 2017, as will an Abhandlung entitled ‘Magic’ as Lived Religion in the Latin-speaking West: Getting behind the Stereotypes, in the series Budapest Polis Studies (Budapest).

Edward Love, following the completion of a BA (2010) and MSt (2013) in Oriental Studies (Egyptology – with a focus in Demotic and Coptic) at the University of Oxford,  undertook two research years at the Ägyptologisches Institut of the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg under the supervision of Joachim Quack. The first of these (funded by the DAAD) saw the completion of a monograph on the bilingual (Old Coptic-Greek) spells of PGM IV, while the second (funded by the Leverhulme Trust) founded a comprehensive study of the sources relating to the emergence and utilization of the so-called Old Coptic script. In 2016 he returned to the University of Oxford and in the summer of 2019 was awarded a DPhil following the examination of a thesis entitled “Innovative Scripts and Spellings in Roman Egypt: Investigations into Script Conventions, Domains, Shift, and Obsolescence as evidenced by Hieroglyphic, Hieratic, Demotic, and Old Coptic Manuscripts”. From September 2018, he has been a contributing Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter (Postdoctoral Researcher) to the project “The Coptic Magical Papyri: Vernacular Religion in Late Antique Egypt” at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, under the direction of Korshi Dosoo and in collaboration with Markéta Preininger Svobodova.

Franco Maltomini is Professor for Papyrology at the University of Pisa and Udine (Italy).  His philological work is mainly concerned with ancient Greek tragedy (Aeschylus) and lyric poetry (Stesichorus, Bacchylides). As a papyrologist, he is co-editor (with R. W. Daniel) of Supplementum Magicum I-II (1990, 1992) and editor princeps of many papyrological texts, primarily of a magical nature. He collaborates with several papyrological collections: The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Kölner Papyri, Papiri della Società Italiana.

Anastasia Maravela is Professor of Ancient Greek at the Dept of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas, University of Oslo, and co-editor of the journal Symbolae Osloenses (Taylor & Francis). The interpretation of Greek poetry, the history of the Greek language and Greek papyri form the core of her research interests. Current research projects include editions of Greek and Coptic papyri in the University of Oslo library and other collections, the Greek medical vocabulary in a historical perspective, and translations of ancient texts through times, languages, and cultures.

Raquel Martín-Hernández is lecturer at the Department of Greek and Indo-European Studies at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She obtained her PhD in 2006 with a doctoral dissertation about Orphism and magic. Most of her research has been related to the study of Greek Magical Papyri and mystery religions. She has trained as a papyrologist through work carried out at the Abadia de Montserrat under the direction of Dr. Sofía Torallas Tovar and has followed papyrology courses at the Leiden Papyrological Institute and the Papyrological Summer School in Lecce.

Ágnes T. Mihálykó obtained an MA in Medieval History (2013) from the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest with a thesis on Christian elements in Greek and Coptic magical texts. In 2014 she finished an MA in Ancient Greek from the same university, with a thesis on PGM P13. She started her Ph.D. at the University of Oslo in October 2013. Besides writing her thesis about Christian liturgical papyri in Greek and Coptic, she has contributed to the edition of Oslo papyri. For list of publications, see here.

Alberto Nodar Domínguez is lecturer in Classics at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, where he manages the DVCTVS papyrus portal (www.upf.edu), directing the research on the Palau Ribes papyrus collection, of which he is curator since 2005, and on the digitisation of texts and images of ancient documents. He obtained is D.Phil. in Greek Papyrology from the University of Oxford, where he subsequently worked on the project The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. He conducted research at the Institut für Papyrologie in the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg as an Alexander von Humboldt scholar, and at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, within the Catalogue of Paraliterary Papyri project. He has edited numerous literary papyri, researching on several aspects of the transmission of ancient literature in Antiquity, such as the use of lectional signs and the quality standards in ancient book production.

Panagiota Sarischouli is Professor of Ancient Greek and Papyrology in the Department of Classics at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She studied Classics, Byzantine and Modern Greek at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1985-1989) and obtained her Ph.D. in Classics at the Institute of Greek and Latin Languages and Literatures at the Freie Universität Berlin (1990-1994). She was trained as a papyrologist at Berlin’s Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection, where she has also held a residential research fellowship funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung (1995-1998). The edition of Greek literary, sub-literary and documentary papyri forms the core of her research interests. Her current research focuses on Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride, and examines questions of religion and magic in post-pharaonic Egypt.

Emilio Suárez de la Torre is Professor of Greek Philology and Chair of the Department of Humanities at Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona). His main research interests focus on Greek Lyric Poetry and Greek Religion, and he is currently leading a Research Project entitled “The Greek Magical Papyri in Context”.

Michael Zellmann-Rohrer is currently a researcher at the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names project (Oxford), where he is responsible in particular for Greek names in Semitic-language sources for the forthcoming volume 6 (Near East). He is in the process of revising for publication a PhD dissertation on Greek incantations and their tradition in classical and late antiquity, Byzantium, and beyond, and preparing editions and re-editions of of ritual texts in Greek, Coptic, and Aramaic. His other research examines oral literature associated with incubation shrines in antiquity and Byzantium. Beginning in 2017 he has been associate editor of the Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum for Egypt and the Near East.

AUSTRALIA

Malcolm Choat is an Associate Professor in the Department of Ancient History at Macquarie University, Sydney, and Director of the Macquarie University Ancient Cultures Research Centre. His current research includes projects on scribal practice in documentary papyri, the rise and development of monasticism in Egypt, and questions of authenticity and forgery in the papyri.

Dr. Rachel Yuen-Collingridge is a postdoctoral researcher on two projects (Papyri from the Rise of Christianity in Egypt and Scribal Practice in Duplicate Documents) at Macquarie University. In addition, she is working on projects on the Renaissance reception of Herodotus, scribal practice in the Greek magical papyri, and, more recently, the role of subjectivity and memory in historical practice. She has taught at the University of New South Wales, the University of New England, and Macquarie University.