Sophia Abplanalp
holds a Master’s in Islamic Art History from the University of Vienna and a Master’s in Art History from the University of St Andrews. Currently a PhD candidate at the University of Vienna’s Chair of Cultural Heritage, her research interrogates the Türkenbeute, investigating its theoretical dimensions and evolving afterlife throughout the 18th century. Since 2020, she has contributed to the COST Action Islamic Legacy: Narratives East, West, South, North of the Mediterranean (1350–1750), serving as its Science Communication Coordinator from 2022 to 2023. Her scholarship explores topics at the juncture of cultural heritage, art history, and historiographical discourse, elucidating the entangled narratives of Central European and Ottoman material culture
Giuseppe Capriotti
is Associate Professor of Early Modern Art History at University of Macerata (Italy), where he teaches Iconography and Iconology, History of Images, European Art History, and Image Education. He was Visiting Professor at University of Split (Croatia), Marie Curie Fellow Researcher at Pwani University, Kilifi (Kenya), Visiting Professor at UNED of Madrid (Spain), Marie Curie Fellow Researcher at Kenyatta University, Nairobi (Kenya), Visiting Professor at Tel Aviv University (Israel). He published several articles or books on the anti-Jewish and anti-Turkish painting and on the fortune of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in art.
Houssem Eddine Chachia
is an Associate Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Tunis (Tunisia). He has served as a Visiting Professor at the University of Murcia and as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. His research focuses primarily on the Moriscos, a topic on which he has published numerous studies and books in Arabic, Spanish, and English. Dr. Chachia has received several grants and awards, including the 2024 Sheikh Zayed Book Award, the Young Researcher Award in History (2020), and the Ibn Battuta Award for Travel Literature (2015) in the category of studies and manuscript editing.
Rubén González Cuerva
(PhD Autonomous University of Madrid, 2010) is Permanent Scientist at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). He has been postdoctoral fellow at the National University of Salta (Argentina), Marie Curie Fellow at the German
Andrzej Drozd
is an orientalist, a faculty member of the Centre for Eastern European Studies at the University of Warsaw, Poland. He is the author of fundamental, interdisciplinary works on the religious literature and culture of the Polish-Lithuanian Tatars. In his works, he focuses on tracing the sources of the historical culture of this community and on the issues of cultural integration of the Tatars with the Christian population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. His research concerns in particular the adaptation of biblical traditions and texts to the Muslim writing of the Tatars, as well as the epigraphy and sepulchral culture, mosque architecture and perishing historical religious rituals. His research also includes Islamic art and epigraphy, as well as the connections between the historical culture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the artistic traditions of the Muslim East.
Ana Echevarría
is Professor of Medieval History at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia in Madrid (Spain). She holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh. Her main research focus is the relations between Christianity and Islam in the Iberian Peninsula, with an emphasis on issues such as polemics, conversion, Mudejars, and the assimilation of Christian communities by Islam in the Early Middle Ages, trying to set the Iberian Peninsula in a broader Mediterranean context. She has been Invited Fellow in several universities and research centres in the US and Europe and is now leading the project “Religious Minorities and Specialized Labour” (funded by the Spanish Ministry of Innovation).
Emir O. Filipović
is Associate professor of medieval history at the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. His research so far has been focused on the study of early Ottoman expansion in the Balkans, medieval chivalry and courtly culture, heraldry, as well as the political, cultural and religious history of Europe and Bosnia in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He has authored several monograph studies on the relations between the Bosnian Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire, the construction of dynastic identity and chivalry in late
Borja Franco Llopis
is Professor of Art History at the UNED (Spain), and member of the Young Academy of Spain and Young Academy of Europe. His research is devoted to the visual and literary representation of the otherness in Europe. He has published some books such as: Pintando al converso. La imagen del morisco en la península ibérica (1492–1614) (Cátedra, 2019) and Imágenes del islam y fiesta pública en la corte portuguesa. De la Unión Ibérica al terremoto de Lisboa (Trea, 2021). He has been a Visiting Scholar in prestigious universities such as Harvard, Columbia, NYU and UC Berkeley.
Mercedes García-Arenal
Research Professor at the CSIC (Spanish National Research Council) in Madrid. Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters (University of Chicago, 2022) and Spanish National Research Award (Ministerio de Cultura, 2019), Member of The Academia Europea and of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council, Mercedes is until March 2026 PI Coordinator of the ERC-Synergy “EuQu” (European Quran) project, was also PI of a previous ERC Advanced Grant, “CORPI”. She is a cultural and religious historian specialised in religious minorities on which she has many publications, such as Ahmad al-Mansur (1578–1603): The Beginnings of Modern Morocco (Oxford, 2009); with Fernando Rodríguez Mediano, The Orient in Spain. Converted Muslims, The Forged Lead Books of Granada and the Rise of Orientalism (Leiden, 2013); and with Rafael Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, The Inquisition Trial of Jeronimo de Rojas, a Morisco of Toledo (1601–1603), (Leiden, 2022); she also edited other books with Gerard Wiegers, The Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain: A Mediterranean Diaspora (Leiden, 2014); Polemical Encounters: Polemics between Christians, Jews and Muslims in Iberia and beyond (University Park, 2019); and The Iberian Qur’an: From the Middle Ages to the Modern Time (Berlin, 2022). Her better known book, written with Gerard Wiegers, is Un hombre en tres mundos (Madrid, 1999) or A man of Three Worlds. Samuel Pallache, a Moroccan Jew in Catholic and Protestant Europe (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins 2003) translated into Arabic, Italian, Dutch and Hebrew.
Mattia Guidetti
is Associate Professor in Islamic art history and archaeology at the University of Bologna. His research focuses on the early Islamic period, with a specific
Elias Kolovos
is Research Director with a specialization in Ottoman History at the Institute of Historical Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation, in Athens, Greece. He is the elected Secretary of the Board of the International Association for Ottoman Social and Economic History. He has written, edited, and coedited 20 books and over 80 papers in Greek and international publications and journals. His research interests include the Mediterranean economic history, the history of the insular worlds, the history of the frontiers, rural and environmental history, as well as the spatial history and the legacies of the Ottoman Empire.
Ognjen Krešić
PhD, is a Research Associate at the Institute for Balkan Studies of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Belgrade, Republic of Serbia). He is a historian whose primary research examines the cultural, religious, and social practices and the legal status of non-Muslims in the Ottoman Balkans (16th–18th centuries), with a particular emphasis on Christian Orthodox monasticism and monastic economy. He is the author of the monograph Hilandar Monastery and the Eastern Balkans in the 18th Century: Cultural and Economic Ties (Belgrade, 2021; in Serbian).
Tijana Krstić
(PhD University of Michigan, 2004) is Associate Professor at the Department of Historical Studies at Central European University in Vienna, Austria. She specializes in religious and intellectual history of the early modern Ottoman Empire, focusing on developments in early modern Sunni Islam as well as inter-confessional relations within Mediterranean and Eurasian contexts. She is the author of Contested Conversions to Islam (Stanford University Press, 2011), and co-editor with Derin Terzioğlu of Historicizing Sunni Islam in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1450–c. 1750 (Brill, 2020) and Entangled Confessionalizations? (Gorgias Press, 2022).
Naz Defne Kut
is a PhD candidate and a Teaching and Research Assistant at Koç University in the History of Art Program. She received her B.A. in History from Boğaziçi
Ana Cabrera Lafuente
is a Museum Curator who has worked at the Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas and Museo del Traje in Madrid. Her field of research includes historical textiles and dress and the history of the decorative arts museums in Spain, mostly participating in research projects. Among her grants, she held a Marie S-Curie Fellowship at the V&A between 2016 and 2018. In 2019, she co-curated an exhibition about fashion and fashion journals in Spain. Her last books as co-editor are Silk, Fabric, Fibre and Fashion (2021) and Collecting Spain. Collecting Spanish Decorative Arts in Britain and Spain (2022).
Helena Lahoz
Graduated in Art History by the University of Valencia and Master in Art History and Islamic Archaeology by the University of Bamberg, she has joined the Corps of Curators of State Museums of Spain in 2021, holding her position at the Department of Medieval Antiquities of the National Archaeological Museum of Madrid (MAN). Her research focuses on Islamic material culture, processes of cultural reception and exchange, historical collecting, and critical, inclusive and gender museology.
Alicia Miguélez
is Assistant Professor of Medieval Art History at the NOVA University in Lisbon (Portugal). Her research interests include medieval visual culture, technical art history and the reception of the Middle Ages in later times. She has recently co-curated the film series Light and Shadow. Representations of the Middle Ages in Cinema (Lisbon, 2022; Madrid, 2023–2024; Tokyo, 2024) and has co-edited, with Erika Loic and Felipe Brandi, the book La Edad Media proyectada. El pasado medieval ibérico en la creación audiovisual en lenguas portuguesa y española (Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2024).
Elena Paulino-Montero
Ph.D. (2015, Universidad Complutense de Madrid) is Associate Professor of Art History at UNED (Madrid, Spain). Her research focuses on the artistic
Filiz Çakır Phillip
is an Independent Curator and Scholar of Islamic Art History. She holds a D.Phil. from the Institute of Art History at the Freie Universität Berlin. Çakır Phillip worked as curator at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto (2013–2022), and at the Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin (2006–2012). She has curated numerous exhibitions, most recently Lustre and Luxe from Islamic Spain: Liquid Frontiers and Entangled Worlds (2023) and Hidden Stories: Books Along the Silk Roads (2022) with Prof. Suzanne Conklin Akbari, and authored several books, including Syrian Living: Medieval to Modern (2022) with Dr. Anke Scharrahs. Çakır Phillip served as a board member of the Board of Trustees of the Association of Art Museum Curators & AAMC Foundation in New York (2021–2023).
Gabriel Pirický
is an Islamologist, Turcologist and Arabist based as a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava, Slovakia. After his graduation in Prague (Charles University) and London (SOAS) he has published and lectured extensively both in Slovakia and Czechia. His main fields of activity include Islam in Turkey and in Central Europe as well as history of the Middle East. He is the author of several publications such as Turkey: A Short History (2006, in Czech) and Islam in Turkey (2004, in Slovak). He is also the chairman of the Slovak Oriental Society.
Bruno Pomara
is an Associate Professor at the University of Valencia. He has been visiting scholar at the universities of La Sapienza – Roma, Federico II – Naples, Nantes, Ca’ Foscari – Venice, Cagliari, ZRS Koper and Trieste. In 2011 he was awarded with the Young Researcher Prize by the FEHM and in 2016 with the Prize for the Religious History by the Istituto Sangalli. He has published three monographies: Bandolerismo, violencia y justicia en la Sicilia barroca (CSIC, 2011); Rifugiati. I moriscos e l’Italia (FUP, 2017) (Spanish translation Comares, 2022); Impresiones diplomáticas. La revuelta de las Alpujarras vista por los embajadores venecianos (Tirant Lo Blanch, 2022).
Luis F. Bernabé Pons
is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies (University of Alicante). He has been Visiting Professor at the University of Algiers, Chercheur invité at the École
Ivana Čapeta Rakić
is an Associate Professor at the University of Split, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Art History. Her research focuses on visual culture from the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, particularly the iconography of the eastern Adriatic coast and former Venetian territories. She approaches artworks within a broader comparative and interdisciplinary framework, considering their geopolitical, cultural, and religious contexts. She has participated in numerous European and national research initiatives. In 2022, she received an award for excellence in the Humanities.
Kate Randazzo
is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of Chicago, where she studies early modern Iberia, North Africa, and the Mediterranean world. Her research in Spain and Morocco has been supported by the Center for International Social Science Research and the American Institute for Maghrib Studies.
Magnus Ressel
is currently Interim Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. His research centers on the early modern period, with a particular focus on cultural, economic, social, religious, and maritime history. He is especially interested in Europe’s entanglements within global developments. A key aspect of his work explores relations across the religious and cultural fault line in the broader Mediterranean region. His dissertation examines the complex relationships—at times conflict-ridden, at times cooperative—between the Maghreb states (the “Barbary corsairs”) and the Netherlands, Denmark, and the Hanseatic cities from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century.
Amadeo Serra
Graduate in Geography and History MA (Universitat de València), PhD in History: Art History (Università di Bologna), now is Full Professor of Medieval
Charlotte Colding Smith
completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne under the supervision of Charles Zika. This work resulted in the monograph Images of Islam, 1453–1600: Turks in Germany and Central Europe (London, 2014). She subsequently collaborated on projects at the University of Mannheim and, from 2016 to 2020, worked as a curatorial and research assistant at the German Maritime Museum, Bremerhaven, Germany, where she is a senior expert fellow. From 2021 to 2025 she was a lecturer and researcher in art history at the University of Bonn. She has held fellowships at the British Museum, London; Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig; the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel; the University of Vienna; and the Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
Laura Stagno
is Full Professor of Early Modern History of Art at the University of Genoa. Her main fields of research are Genoese art and patronage in the Early Modern period, and iconography (which she teaches at the undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral level). Her activities comprise the participation in a number of Italian and international research projects (including the COST Action Islamic Legacy: Narratives East, West, South, North of the Mediterranean). She has published extensively on the Doria family’s artistic commissions, and on the representation of Islamic alterity (she recently co-curated the exhibition Ottomani, barbareschi e mori nell’arte a Genova).
Katarzyna K. Starczewska
is a Tenured Scientist at the Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean and Near East, Centre for Human and Social Sciences – Spanish National Research Council (CCHS-CSIC) in Madrid. Her research explores inter-cultural encounters, religious controversy, and knowledge transmission in early modern Spain, Italy, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. She has published extensively on Latin Qur’anic translations and multilingual Islamic texts in Europe. Her monograph, Latin Translation of the Qur’ān commissioned by Egidio da Viterbo (Diskurse der Arabistik, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2018), presents a 950-page critical edition and study of this Latin Qur’an,
Ana Struillou
is a Past and Present Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research (London) interested in all things material and mobile. She is also an associated member of the Institut d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, in Paris. Her work explores the movement of artefacts and commodities between the Ottoman and non-Ottoman Maghrib, the Iberian Peninsula, and the French Monarchy across the early sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Her work has appeared in the Mediterranean Historical Review among other academic venues, as well as in various public history fora.
Ferenc Tóth
(1967), Senior Research Fellow of the Institute of History at the Research Centre for the Humanities (Budapest). He got his PhD degree at the Sorbonne University (1995) and holds a diploma from the Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (Paris) as well. He also defended a thesis of habilitation to direct research at the Sorbonne University (2003) and a thesis of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2014). His research areas: history of Turkish Wars in Hungary (17th-18th Centuries), French-Hungarian connections, Hungarian military history, activity of Hungarian agents in French service, Hungarian emigration in Ottoman Empire.
Evrim Türkçelik
is Associate Professor of History at the Social Sciences University of Ankara. He specializes in Ottoman Mediterranean policy during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, with a particular focus on Ottoman-Spanish relations in the Early Modern period, especially in the context of diplomacy, maritime strategy, and political networks. Among his publications are “El Imperio otomano y la política de alianzas: las relaciones francootomanas en el tránsito del siglo XVI al XVII” (Hispania, 2015) and “The ‘Reluctant’ Admiral: Damad Halil Pasha and The Ottoman Navy (1595–1598)” (Mediterranea Ricerche Storiche, 2023).
Antonio Urquízar-Herrera
Ph.D. (2000, Universidad de Córdoba) is Full Professor of Art History at UNED (Madrid, Spain). He has published several books on early modern Iberian art,
Asim Zubčević
is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Islamic Studies, University of Sarajevo. His main research interest is social and intellectual history of Ottoman Bosnia.