Our People

Elizabeth Papp Kamali

ekamali@law.harvard.edu

Chair of the Standing Committee on Medieval Studies

Austin Wakeman Scott Professor of Law

J.D. Harvard University, Ph.D. University of Michigan

Professor Kamali teaches criminal law and the history of English law and legal institutions. Her research focuses on the development of criminal law within the English common law tradition in the Middle Ages, in particular the evolution of the trial jury...

Omar Abdel-Ghaffar

Center for Middle East Studies

J.D., Harvard Law School

M.A. (Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies) Columbia University

B.A. (Political Science) University of California Berkeley

Omar is interested in Mamluk agrarian law, practice, and administration. His interests include legal history, peasant history, and agrarian studies.

Emily Claire Adams

claireadams@fas.harvard.edu

Special Assistant for Conference Planning

Ph.D. Harvard University

Claire Adams is a special assistant to the Committee on Medieval Studies, managing logistical and financial planning for the 2025 Medieval Academy of American annual meeting on the Harvard campus, and the Department of History's Catalog and Curriculum...

Walid Akef

wakef@g.harvard.edu

History of Art and Architecture

Walid Akef is a PhD candidate in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University. He specializes in the architectural history of the pre-modern Mediterranean world, with a focus on North Africa, southern Italy, and Iberia. His research...

Dimiter Angelov

dangelov@fas.harvard.edu

Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine History

Chair, Ph.D. Program in Byzantine Studies

Ph.D. Harvard University

Professor Angelov's research addresses the intellectual and political history of the Byzantine world after the tenth century. Among his publications are Imperial Ideology and Political Thought in Byzantium (1204-1330) (Cambridge University Press, 2007)...

Jesse Arlen

jarlen@fas.harvard.edu

Lecturer in Armenian Studies

Ph.D. University of California Los Angeles

Jesse S. Arlen is a scholar of the religious literature and intellectual history of medieval Armenia, with particular attention to asceticism and mysticism. He is the co-author of Odes of Saint Nersess the Graceful: Annotated Translation (New York...

Saaleh Baseer

saalehbaseer@g.harvard.edu

Department of History & Middle Eastern Studies

B.A., Columbia University

Saaleh is a PhD candidate in the joint History and Middle Eastern studies program, where he studies postclassical Hanafi legal theory, Persian philosophy, and procedural law in the Ottoman-Mughal empires. He earned his BA at Columbia University & also...

Saskia Behrens

sbehrens@fas.harvard.edu

Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures

M.Phil (Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic Studies), University of Cambridge

M.A. (Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Studies; English), University of Aberdeen

Saskia Behrens focuses on comparative approaches to Irish literature, in particular the transmission and reception of Classical narratives in medieval Ireland, with an overarching interest in wider Indo-European cultural and linguistic transfer.

Josiah Blackmore

jblackmore@fas.harvard.edu

Nancy Clark Smith Professor of the Language and Literature of Portugal

Ph.D. Harvard University

Josiah Blackmore is a scholar of Iberian literature and culture, with a focus on medieval and early modern Portuguese writing. He is the author of Manifest Perdition: Shipwreck Narrative and the Disruption of Empire (University of Minnesota Press, 2002)...

Suzanne Preston Blier

blier@fas.harvard.edu

Allen Whitehill Clowes Chair of Fine Arts

Ph.D. Columbia University

On leave 2025 - 2026

Suzanne Preston Blier teaches in the departments of History of Art and Architecture and African and African American Studies, and is an affiliate member of the Committee on Medieval Studies. Her research addresses the history of African art and...

Konrad Boeschenstein

konradboeschenstein@g.harvard.edu

Department of History

B.A. Renaissance Studies, University of Toronto

History of Ethics, Education, Politics and Society, Theology, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Comparative Literature, with sources in Italian, French, Latin, Ancient Greek, Arabic, emphasis on Renaissance Italy, placed in longue durée global perspective

Lorenzo Bondioli

lorenzobondioli@fas.harvard.edu

Assistant Professor of History

Ph.D. Princeton University

On leave 2025 - 2026

Lorenzo Bondioli's research on the political economy of medieval Islamic empires focuses in particular on the interplay of labor, capital, and fiscal structures in Egypt in the Fatimid era (tenth to twelfth centuries CE), when the country simultaneously...