Dr. Ada Nifosì is Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Kent. She researches and writes on the social and legal status of women in the Egyptian and Greco-Roman world, as well as religious ritual, children, and toys. She earned a PhD in Classical Archaeology from the University of Padua. In 2009 she published a book on Ptolemaic and Roman period amulets, Catalogo degli amuleti di Bakchias. Her newest monograph, Becoming a Woman and Mother in Greco-Roman Egypt, explores the life-cycle of women in that period. She has another book on funerary commemorations of young, unmarried women across the Mediterranean coming out soon (2025).

Dr. Annette Yoshiko Reed is a Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School. Previously teaching in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at NYU, her research is wide-ranging. She’s written extensively on early Christianity, Second Temple Judasim, and their intersections and partings. Take a look at her books Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity or Demons, Angels, and Writing in Ancient Judaism. After a BA at McGill and a masters at Harvard, Annette earned her PhD at Princeton University.

Dr. Caryn Tamber-Rosenau is an Instructional Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and Religious Studies at the University of Houston. She received her PhD in Religion from Vanderbilt, her MA in Jewish Studies from Towson University (Baltimore Hebrew Institute), and her BA from the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation and first book, Women in Drag: Gender and Performance in the Hebrew Bible and Early Jewish Literature (2018), explore how biblical heroines like Judith and Jael perform or perhaps even parody the female gender.

Dr. Deborah Lyons is an Associate Professor of Classics at Miami University (Ohio). She holds degrees from Wesleyan University and Princeton University, where she earned a PhD in Classics. Deborah works on gender in antiquity—especially in myth and literature. She also brings her expertise to Greek archaic and classical poetry, religion, and anthropological approaches to the study of antiquity. Some of her many books include: Gender and Immortality: Heroines in Ancient Greek Myth and Cult, Women and Property in Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Societies with Raymond Westbrook, and Dangerous Gifts: Gender and Exchange in Ancient Greece. 

Dr. Elaine Pagels is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton. A multi-time New York Times best-selling author, she is most famous for The Gnostic Gospels. In her other books she writes on gnosticism and early Christianity, sexuality and politics, and the origins of Christian anti-Semitism. A MacArthur Genius grantee, Elaine was also the first woman admitted to a PhD in Religion at Harvard, a story she recounts in her autobiography Why Religion?

Dr. Elizabeth Shanks Alexander is Full Professor at the University of Virginia in the Department of Religious Studies. She received her MA, MPhil, and PhD in Judaic Studies from Yale University, after a BA in Religion from Haverford College. She has written extensively about rabbinic literature and culture, especially oral tradition and the production of the Mishnah. In the last decade she has turned her attention to women, ritual, and gender within rabbinic literature. Her book Gender and Timebound Commandments in Judaism was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. She has also written Transmitting Mishnah: The Shaping Influence of Oral Tradition. 

Dr. Julia Kelto Lillis is Assistant Professor of Early Christian History at Union Theological Seminary, where she specializes in gender and sexuality in early Christianity. She earned a BA from St. Olaf College, an MDiv and ThM from Princeton Theological Seminary, and a PhD in Religion from Duke University. She received the American Society of Church History’s Jane Dempsey Douglass prize for her article, “Paradox in Partu: Verifying Virginity in the Protevangelium of James.” Virgin Territory: Configuring Female Virginity in Early Christianity, won the Best First Book Prize from the North American Patristics Society. Her second book will analyze ideas of genderless personhood that early Christians imagined for heavenly or earthly human life.

Dr. Julia Watts Belser is Professor of Jewish Studies in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown, and a core faculty member in their Disabilities Studies Program. She is also a rabbi, a wheelchair user, and queer feminist advocate for disability and gender justice. She researches ethics and theology, as well as gender, sexuality, and disability in rabbinic literature. Julia has written multiple books — including Rabbinic Tales of Destruction: Gender, Sex, and Disability in the Ruins of Jerusalem, Power, Ethics, and Ecology: Rabbinic Responses to Drought and Disaster, and most recently Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole. 

Dr. Kate Cooper is Professor of History at Royal Holloway, University of London. She received her PhD from Princeton after degrees from Wesleyan and Harvard. She writes on late antique Christianity, women and the Roman household, religious conflict, and martyrdom. Her books include Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women, The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity, The Fall of the Roman Household, and her forthcoming Queens of a Fallen World: The Lost Women of Augustine’s Confessions. She often provides expert commentary for the BBC, CNN, and National Geographic.

Dr. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is Professor in Ancient History at the University of Cardiff. Lloyd’s expertise crosses fields from ancient Iran to Greek socio-cultural history, from textiles and clothing, to gender and sexuality. He earned his bachelors from the University of Hull and his masters and PhD in Ancient History at Cardiff University. He has received multiple awards, including an Iran Heritage grant and a Carnegie Trust Award. He has authored, co-authored, and co-edited more than 17 books, including Aphrodite’s Tortoise: The Veiled Women of Ancient Greece, Dress in Greece and Rome A-Z, and Ancient Persia and the Book of Esther. Order his most recent release, The Cleopatras: The Forgotten Queens of Egypt.

Professor Rebecca Flemming is the  A.G. Leventis Chair in Ancient Greek Scientific and Technological Thought at the University of Exeter. She earned her MA and PhD in the History Department of Kings College London. She researches pandemics and disease; gender, bodies, and sexuality; and reproduction and society in the classical world. She wrote Medicine and the Making of Roman Women, and co-edited two volumes: Reproduction: Antiquity to the Present Day (with Nick Hopwood and Lauren Kassell) and Medicine and Markets in the Graeco-Roman World and Beyond (with Laurence M. V. Totelin). She has also appeared in a BBC4 documentary on the Justinianic plague. Keep an eye out for her forthcoming monograph on medicine and empire in the Roman World!

Dr. Sarit Kattan Gribetz is an Associate Professor in the Theology Department at Fordham University. She completed her BA, MA, and PhD at Princeton University. Her first book, Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism, explores the conceptions  of time within rabbinic literature. In addition to her work on time and temporality, Sarit’s work broadly focuses on ancient Judaism, gender and sexuality, and material spaces. Her current book project explores Queen Helena of Adiabene, and following that will write a gendered history of Jerusalem.

Dr. Shai Secunda is Jacob Neusner Professor in the History and Theology of Judaism at Bard College. He earned a bachelor's degree in Talmudic Literature from Ner Israel Rabbinical College, a master's in Liberal Arts from Johns Hopkins University, and an MA and PhD from Yeshiva University. He was the Blaustein Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University, and he served as a member of the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Shai has written two books: The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Bavli in Its Sasanian Context and The Talmud’s Red Fence: Menstruation and Difference in Babylonian Judaism and Its Sasanian Context. The latter was a finalist for the 2022 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award. He also edited two volumes on Jewish and Iranian studies.

Dr. Solange Ashby is President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in Egyptology and Nubian Religion at the University of California, Los Angeles in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. She is an Egyptologist, Nubiologist, and archaeologist. Her book Calling Out to Isis: The Enduring Nubian Presence at Philae, studies Nubian worshippers of the goddess Isis. She earned a BA in Intercultural Studies at Simon’s Rock College and a PhD in Egyptology at the University of Chicago. She has researched at the temple of Philae in Egypt and excavated at the royal cemetery of El-Kurru in Sudan. In 2018 she featured in a documentary directed by Taaqiy Grant, and in 2020 she featured in the film series Hapi.

Dr. Susan Ashbrook Harvey is the Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of History and Religion at Brown University. She specializes in late antique and Byzantine Christianity, with an emphasis on Syriac Christianity. Susan has published extensively on asceticism, liturgical prayer, and women in late antique Christianity. Some of her books include Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination, Song and Memory: Biblical Women in the Syriac Tradition, and Holy Women of the Syrian Orient (with Sebastian P. Brock). She earned her PhD from the University of Birmingham as a Marshall Scholar and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Dr. Thomas A. J. McGinn is Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. He earned a BA from Harvard College magna cum laude, an MA from Cambridge University, and a PhD from the University of Michigan. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Academy in Rome, and the Fulbright Commission. Some of his most famous books are Prostitution, Sexuality, and the Law in Ancient Rome, The Economy of Prostitution in the Roman World, and Widows and Patriarchy (2008).