Michael Flier is a linguist and semiotician, with special interests in Ukrainian and East Slavic language, literature, and culture, and a member of the Steering Committee for the Ph.D. Program in Byzantine Studies. He is the author of Aspects of Nominal Determination in Old Church Slavic (Mouton, 1974) and of numerous publications on historical Slavic linguistics and on the semiotics and history of power and ceremony in the Slavic world. These include "Political Ideas and Rituals" in The Cambridge History of Russia (2006); "Seeing is Believing: The Semiotics of Dynasty and Destiny in Muscovite Rus" in Ceremonial Culture in Pre-Modern Europe (2007); “Muscovite Ritual in the Context of Jerusalem Old and New,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 49 (2015); “Murder Most Foul: Picturing the Death of Andrei Bogoljubskij” in Seeing Muscovy Anew: Politics—Institutions—Culture (2017); The Battle for Ukrainian: A Comparative Perspective. (with co-editor Andrea Graziosi, 2017).