Short Bio
I am an Associate Professor of History. My research lies at the intersection of Roman History, History of Religion, Digital Humanities, and Cultural Heritage Informatics with a particular focus on the literature and culture in the Syriac language. Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic that flourished in the Middle East from the third to the ninth centuries C.E. and continues to be used by communities throughout the Middle East and India today.
I direct Syriaca.org, a linked-open data project dedicated to advancing scholarship in the field of Syriac Studies and to preserving Syriac cultural heritage. I am also the general editor of SPEAR: Syriac Persons, Events, and Relations (forthcoming), an online prosopographical research tool; and the co-editor (with Sergey Minov) of the forthcoming Syriac Taxonomy (Beta release), a SKOS taxonomy for Syriac Studies. As part of my current NEH-funded work I am producing an OER (Open Educational Resource) corpus of Syriac source material in English translation. These TEI encoded texts will be integrated into the Syriaca.org knowledge graph through the markup of persons, places, works, and keyword concepts.
I am also the author of Paideia and Cult: Christian Initiation in Theodore of Mopsuestia and the co-editor (with Arietta Papaconstantinou and Neil McLynn) of Conversion in Late Antiquity: Christianity, Islam, and Beyond. I have published articles and book chapters on Digital History, religious conversion, and religious violence in Late Antiquity.
Scholarly IDs
ORCID: 0000-0001-6986-9650
Academia.edu
Department of History
TAMU 4236
College Station, TX 77483-4236