Principal investigator
Prof. dr. Peter Van Nuffelen
Peter Van Nuffelen is Professor for the Cultural History of the Ancient World in the History Department of Ghent University. With training in ancient history, philosophy and patristics, his main research interests are (1) the history of religion in the ancient world, in particular the ruler cult, philosophical views of religion, and early Christianity; (2) literature and history of Late Antiquity (AD 250-800), especially historiography and social interactions in the public sphere (such as petitions); (3) the cultural history of Late Antiquity, including toleration, violence, and generally intellectual changes in this period. In his work, he combines philological approaches with wider interpretations, relying on texts in Greek, Latin, and oriental languages.
Before coming to Ghent in 2009, Peter Van Nuffelen held positions in Leuven and Exeter, besides numerous visiting fellowships. He is Laureate of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (2011), was awarded the Prix Franz Cumont (2012) and is Korrespondierendes Mitglied des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts. Kommission für Alte Geschichte und Epigraphik, Munich. He is the recipient of two ERC Grants, a Starting Grant on late antique historiography and an Advanced Grant on political thought in the first millennium.
He is Ghent representative in the board of OIKOS, the Dutch research school for Classics.
Team members
Justine De Rouck, MA
Justine de Rouck is a PhD researcher on the project. She studied History at the University of Ghent (UGent) where she obtained a B.A. in 2023 and M.A. in 2024. Her master’s thesis, supervised by prof. dr. Peter Van Nuffelen, focused on the epigraphic evidence for God-fearers in late antique Asia Minor as part of a broader phenomenon of religious boundary-crossing grounded in urban social life. In 2025 she obtained a B.A. in Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven) working on apocalyptic intermediary figures in Second Temple Judaism.
Tanguy Desimone, MA
Tanguy Desimone is a PhD researcher on the project. He obtained a bachelor’s degree at the University of Lausanne in Arts with latin and ancient history as options, a master’s degree at the University of Pisa in ancient history and philology with a master’s thesis on Western monks in Byzantine Empire and a certificate in medieval history at the University of Geneva. His interests are the history of sciences, the text transmission, the translations of texts during the Middle Age, Byzantine diplomacy, relations between West and East, Byzantine historiography.
Anna Giaconia, MA
Anna Giaconia is a PhD researcher on the project. She earned a B.A. in Humanities from the University of Bologna (2017) and an M.A. in Religious Studies from the University of Padua and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (2020), specializing in Syriac Christianity and Judaism. Her master’s thesis, entitled The Syriac Translation of Hebrew Bible’s Sexual Euphemisms in the Old Testament Peshitta, was supervised by Prof. Vittorio Berti and Prof. Emiliano Fiori. From October 2024 to February 2025, she worked as an intern at the IRHT-CNRS in Paris, where she received training in Syriac and Hebrew codicology. Her broader research interests include the legal and social history of Christian and Jewish groups in the Middle East, Syriac and Hebrew manuscript traditions, and the intersections of gender, law, and religious identity in Late Antiquity.
Thomas Girault, MA
Thomas Girault is a PhD researcher on the project. He studied History and Germanistics at the University of Dijon and the University of Mainz, where he earned his B.A. (2021) ; he then studied Late Antique History at the Universities of Strasbourg and Trier as a TRISTRA-M student (UFA/DFH), where he earned his M.A. degree (2024). During his M.A., he worked, under the supervision of Pr. Eckhard Wirbelauer and Pr. Christian Rollinger, on the early days of early Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land, focusing mainly on the Peregrinatio Egeriae.
dr. Gabrielle Russo
Gabrielle Russo is a postdoctoral researcher on the project. Before arriving in Ghent, Gabrielle composed a PhD thesis at the University of Cambridge entitled, ‘The Edge of Glory: The ʿAbbāsid Turkic Guard in Third/Ninth Century Praise Writing’. This thesis analysed praise writing dedicated to and on the topic of the Turkic military elite, with reference to al-Jāḥiẓ’s (d. 868/9) epistle Manāqib al-Turk (‘The Merits of the Turks’) and the poetry of al-Buḥturī (d. 897). Gabrielle’s postdoctoral project continues to work with panegyric by using regional panegyric to consider idealised local leadership.
dr. Jeroen Verrijssen
Jeroen Verrijssen is a postdoctoral researcher on the project. He studied Hebrew linguistics and literature at the Faculty of Arts (KU Leuven) and afterwards completed his PhD in Religious Studies at the Faculty of Theology (KU Leuven). His doctoral research brought to a light the ‘Liturgical Targum’, a new textual tradition of the Targums (the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Bible).
Associated researchers
dr. Shlomi Efrati
Research Unit of Biblical Studies, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven.
dr. Guillermo Menéndez Sánchez
GCLA – Ghent Centre for Late Antiquity, Department of History, UGent.
Guillermo Menéndez Sánchez is a FWO Junior Postdoctoral Fellow at the History Department of Ghent University. He studied History at the University of Oviedo (Spain), where he earned his B.A. (2015). He studied Ancient History at the Ca’Foscari University of Venice (Italy), where he earned his M.A. (2018). He completed a Ph.D. (2022) jointly supervised by the University of Padua, Italy, and the EPHE, France: he studied the main anti-Manichaean Greek works of the 6th century, a group of sources often neglected by modern research. Guillermo’s main research interests include Late Antiquity, History of Early Christianity, History of Gnosticism, and Byzantine History. In particular, he is interested in the History of Manichaeism, and the legacy that this religious group left in the society and culture of the Mediterranean world.
dr. Cedrik Michel
Department of Classics, Reading University.
Cédrik Michel is a post-doctoral Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Department of Classics of Reading University, UK. He holds degrees in ancient and medieval history from McGill (Canada), Cambridge (UK) and Durham (UK). His current project examines otherness and interactions between different political, religious, ethnic and cultural groups in the late Roman and Sasanian Empires (c.225-650 CE).
dr. Giorgia Nicosia
GCLA – Ghent Centre for Late Antiquity, Department of History, UGent.
Giorgia Nicosia is a Post-doctoral researcher at the History Department at Ghent University. She studied Classics at Siena and Padua Universities, where she earned respectively her B.A. (2017) and M.A. degrees (2019). In 2024, she earned her PhD degree in History and religious studies from Ghent University and the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE, Paris), with a thesis entitled: “Old stories for new times: Syriac historiographical excerpt collections (6th-10th c.)”. Currently, she is carrying out the FWO-project: Setting boundaries. Purity in 4th-9th c. Syriac Christianity and its interreligious context.
dr. Mehdy Shaddel
Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge