About Us
Meet Our Contributors
Nelly
van Doorn-Harder
Nelly van Doorn-Harder is a scholar of religion. Presently, she is a professor at Wake Forest University (North Carolina, USA) and the Vrije Universiteit (Amsterdam, Netherlands). Her work focuses on the Coptic Christians from Egypt and Islam in Southeast Asia. Although these fields seem far apart, Professor van Doorn-Harder connects them by studying gender, leadership, interfaith engagement, and issues pertaining to freedom of religion. She grew up in the Netherlands, and now lives in the US. For five years she lived and worked in Egypt, where she studied the Coptic Orthodox Church. For more information about Nelly’s work, visit her personal website.
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Jenny Mikhail is an Australian-born Egyptian who is currently completing her Masters in Theological Studies at St Cyril’s Coptic Orthodox College in Sydney, Australia. She works in the Pharmaceutical Industry as a Human Resources professional and finds interest in connecting the world we live in with the spirituality found in Orthodoxy.
Jenny Mikhail
Howard
Middleton-Jones
Born in South West-Wales, U.K. Howard, is a retired archaeologist, author and photographer. For many years, he taught archaeology and Coptic Studies for the Continuing Adult Education Part-time degree programme, at Swansea University, South Wales. Howard is also a contributing author to the regularly published American University Press volumes, ‘Christianity and Monasticism in Upper Egypt’ and related series volumes.
Howard has spent over 20 years visiting Egypt and presenting papers on Coptic archaeology, and in 2007 developed the Coptic multi-media database project, producing a fully searchable and interactive catalogue of the monastic sites.
Howard also runs the Coptic Research website www.ambilacuk.com/coptic and is founder and director of the U.K. Coptic Research Centre.
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Over many years, Howard has photographed and collated a large collection of photographs of a number of monastic sites throughout Egypt, the albums of which can be accessed via his photography site, ‘Desertman Photography’ at www.ambilacuk.com/desertmanphotography