BA, MA, PhD
Lisa is a lecturer and research co-ordinator at St Athanasius College (SAC). Prior to her current position, she held various corporate positions in Business Marketing in Australia, the UK, and the UAE.
Lisa has a Masters degree in Egyptology and a Masters in Coptic Studies (both from Macquarie University, Sydney Australia), and a Ph.D. from Macquarie University and from the University of Göttingen, Germany (co-tutelle 2016). Her areas of interest include Coptic Studies, Early Egyptian Monasticism, Archaeology, and Christian-Arabic Studies.
Her publications to date have focused on the areas of Early Egyptian Monasticism and Hagiography. Her latest monograph is ‘The Arabic Life of Antony Attributed to Serapion of Thmuis: Cultural Memory Reinterpreted’ (Brill, 2018), with ‘The Greek, Coptic and Arabic Sayings of Antony the Great’ (co-author with Tim Vivian, Liturgical Press) and ‘The Proceedings of St Athanasius College’s International Symposium of Coptic Studies: “Copts in Modernity” 13 to 16 July 2018’, eds. Nelly Van Doorn-Harder, Mark Swanson and Elizabeth Agaiby (Brill), forthcoming in 2020. Lisa is currently leading a pioneering project to digitise and catalogue the entire collection of approx. 1,200 Coptic and Arabic manuscripts at the ancient 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’; ‘Ascetic Theology and the Making of a Monk in Late Antiquity’. Lisa is also SAC’s Research Co-ordinator and Deputy Chair of the UD’s Research Committee.
Lisa is an active member of the Coptic Orthodox Church and is involved in committees both within the Diocese of Melbourne as well as in Sydney, and her involvement in directing the Manuscript Project at St Paul’s Monastery in Egypt, not only serves an academic purpose, but also a fundamental service aspect: for centuries the manuscripts have been housed in the monastery’s fortress that lacks the conditions necessary for their preservation and as a result many of the manuscripts are damaged by moisture and insects. Thus the project to digitise their entire collection was primarily proposed for the benefit of the Monastery to eliminate the real threat of the manuscripts from further damage and thus preserve them for future generations.
Accredited teaching disciplines
Research areas
Positions
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Research Co-ordinator
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Lecturer