International Association for Coptic Studies

The Board of the International Association for Coptic Studies 2026–2030

Tonio Sebastian Richter, Professor at the Freie Universität Berlin (President)

Sofía Torallas Tovar, Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton/University of Chicago (President-Elect)

Victor Ghica, Professor at the MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society, Oslo (Secretary)

Mennat-Allah El Dorry, Assistant Professor at the American University in Cairo (Director, Cairo Center)

Matthias Müller, Lecturer at the University of Basel (Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Coptic Studies)

Hugo Lundhaug, Professor at the University of Oslo (Congress Secretary)

Alin Suciu, Senior Researcher at the Göttingen Academy (Webmaster)

Mary K. Farag, Associate Professor at the Princeton Theological Seminary (Member at Large, 2 Terms)

Maher Eissa, Professor at the Fayoum University (Member at Large, 2 Terms)

Florence Calament, Conservateur en chef, Musée du Louvre, Paris (Member at Large, 1 Term)

Frank Feder, Senior Researcher at the Göttingen Academy (Member at Large, 1 Term)

Participants in the 13th International Congress of Coptic Studies, Göttingen, 27 July-1 August 2026.
Photo credit: Naoko Wolze.

During the 13th International Congress of Coptic Studies, all members of the Association were invited to submit nominations for the new Board. Based on the proposals received, two new Members-at-Large were elected. Both will serve two consecutive four-year terms.

The new Board of the International Association for Coptic Studies is composed as follows: Tonio Sebastian Richter serves as President, with Sofía Torallas Tovar as President-Elect. As customary, the President-Elect will succeed to the presidency at the end of the current four-year term.

Victor Ghica replaces Stephen Emmel as Secretary, while Hugo Lundhaug assumes the office of Congress Secretary and will oversee the organization of the next International Congress of Coptic Studies in 2030 in Oslo. Alin Suciu continues as Webmaster of the Association, Mennat-Allah El Dorry becomes Director of the Cairo Center, and Matthias Müller takes over as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Coptic Studies. Under the revised statutes, the offices of Secretary, Webmaster, Director of the Cairo Center, and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Coptic Studies are now limited to a maximum of two consecutive four-year terms.

The Members-at-Large are Florence Calament (one term remaining), Maher Eissa (two terms), Mary K. Farag (two terms), and Frank Feder (one term remaining). Following Hugo Lundhaug's appointment as Congress Secretary, Frank Feder joins the Board as Member-at-Large to complete the second term he had already begun as Secretary of the Göttingen Congress.

In this blog post, you can read about the closing ceremony of the 13th International Congress of Coptic Studies, held yesterday in Göttingen. Among other things, you will find out the venue of the next congress, scheduled for 2030, and the newly elected Board of the International Association for Coptic Studies.

Link in the first comment.

On the opening of the 13th International Congress of Coptic Studies. Link in the first comment.

To all participants in the 13th International Congress of Coptic Studies (Göttingen, 27 July–1 August):

If you are planning to visit the manuscript exhibition "Entangled Communities: Global Egypt and Its Multilingual Manuscript Heritage," please note the information below.

Exhibition Visit

The exhibition "Entangled Communities: Global Egypt and Its Multilingual Manuscript Heritage" will be open to congress participants and the general public from 27 to 31 July, daily between 14:00 and 17:00, at the Göttingen State and University Library.

As Wednesday, 29 July, is the congress's panel-free day, we expect many participants to take the opportunity to visit the exhibition that afternoon. To help ensure a pleasant experience for everyone and to avoid overcrowding, we kindly ask those planning to visit on Wednesday to follow the suggested time slots below:

Surnames A–E: 14:30–15:15
Surnames F–O: 15:15–16:00
Surnames P–Z: 16:00–17:00

These time slots are intended solely to facilitate a smoother flow of visitors on Wednesday afternoon. Since the exhibition will remain open every afternoon from 27 to 31 July (14:00–17:00), participants are warmly invited to visit on any of those days if that is more convenient.

Lina Elhage-Mensching & Alin Suciu

Over at our Coptic Old Testament blog, Alin Suciu has written a short post about a recent article he published in Novum Testamentum. Link in the first comment.

Job opening: postdoctoral researcher in Coptic Christianity, Institut für Christentumsgeschichte, University of Vienna. Link in the first comment.

Dear colleagues,

The Third Circular of the 13th International Congress of Coptic Studies, which will be held in Göttingen, 27 July – 1 August 2026, has now been published. We kindly invite you to read it carefully, as it contains important updates and practical information concerning the forthcoming congress.

🔗 The link is available in the comments section of this post.

The lecture series, “Digital Coptic Textual Studies: A Decade of Digital Research on the Written Heritage of Christian Egypt in Göttingen and Beyond,” organized by the Institute for Egyptology and Coptic Studies at the University of Göttingen and the Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament at the Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Göttingen, continues tomorrow at 16:15 CET with a presentation by Caroline T. Schroeder (University of Oklahoma) and Amir Zeldes (Georgetown University), entitled “Collaboration and Computation in Coptic Studies.”

The Zoom link for online participation is available on the page dedicated to the lecture series (see the comments section).