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Dr Lisa Agaiby

BA, MA, PhD

HDR Supervisor Course Advisor

Lisa is the Academic Dean and Senior Lecturer at St Athanasius College (SAC). She has a Masters degree in Egyptology and a Masters in Coptic Studies (both from Macquarie University, Sydney Australia), and a PhD from Macquarie University and from the University of Göttingen, Germany. Her areas of interest include Coptic Studies, Early Egyptian Monasticism, Archaeology, and Christian-Arabic Studies.

Her latest publications include: Lisa Agaiby and Tim Vivian (2021) Door of the Wilderness: The Greek, Coptic, and Copto-Arabic Sayings of St. Antony of Egypt (Leiden: Brill); Lisa Agaiby, Mark N. Swanson, and Nelly Van Doorn-Harder eds. (2021) The Proceedings of St Athanasius College’s International Symposium of Coptic Studies: “Copts in Modernity” 13 to 16 July 2018 (Leiden: Brill); and Elizabeth (Lisa) Agaiby (2018) The Arabic Life of Antony attributed to Serapion of Thmuis. Cultural Memory Reinterpreted (Leiden: Brill).

Lisa is currently leading a project to digitise and catalogue the collection of manuscripts at the ancient Coptic Monastery of St Paul the Hermit at the Red Sea, Egypt.

At St Athanasius College, Lisa teaches the following units: ‘Uncovering the Past: An Archaeology of Christian Egypt’; ‘Saints and Sinners: Women in Late Antiquity’; ‘Hagiography and the Cult of the Saints’; ‘The Lives and Times of the Desert Fathers’; and ‘Ascetic Theology and the Making of a Monk in Late Antiquity’.

University Appointments

  • St Athanasius College
    Academic Dean
    St Athanasius College
  • St Athanasius College
    Senior Lecturer
    St Athanasius College

Teaching disciplines

Church History; History

Research areas

Coptic Studies, Early Egyptian Monasticism, Hagiography, Late Antiquity, Archaeology, Christian-Arabic Studies, Manuscript Studies

Recent Publications

All publications
2023 Two Millennia of Coptic Culture Proceedings of the Eleventh International Congress of Coptic Studies, Claremont Graduate University, California, USA, July 25-30, 2016
2023 Scribal Practices in the Red Sea Monasteries
2023 “A Wonder that was Performed by Our Holy Father the Archimandrite Anbā Shinūdah, by the Hand of Our Father the Patriarch Anbā Mattāʾūs” in MS St Paul Hist. 132.
2021 Copto-Arabic Sayings Attributed to St Antony the Great
2021 Abba Antony, Star of the Wilderness and Crown of Monks

External Affiliations

  • Bulletin de la Société d'Archéologie Copte (Editorial Board)
  • International Association for Coptic Studies (Member)
  • St Shenouda the Archimandrite Coptic Society (Member)
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