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

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  Academic Dean
  St Athanasius College
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  Senior Lecturer
  St Athanasius College

External Affiliations

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