About the Contributors
- About the Contributors
Deresse Ayenachew received a degree in history from Addis Ababa University in 1990. From 1990 to 2001, he worked at the Ministry of Culture as a historian, then obtained his Masters in History in 2004 and his doctorate in 2009 from the University of Paris-1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne). He is now assistant professor of history at the University of Debre Berhan, Ethiopia. He has authored and co-authored several articles on the medieval history and archaeology of Ethiopia.
Paul Bertrand is a full researcher in medieval studies and scientific manager of the Centre de Ressources Numériques TELMA. He is a specialist in medieval diplomatics—the sociological and historical study of medieval charters and documents.
Claire Bosc-Tiessé and Marie-Laure Derat, historians, are full researchers for the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). They are currently based at the French Center for Ethiopian Studies (CFEE) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where they are leading an historical and archaeological research program on the site of Lalibala and its surroundings.
Donald Crummey is professor emeritus in the department of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an affiliate of its [End Page 149] Center for African Studies. He joined the faculty of the University of Illinois in 1973 after teaching in the history department at Addis Ababa University for six years. He is the author of Land and Society in the Christian Kingdom of Ethiopia (Urbana, 2000) and of numerous journal articles and book chapters. His recent work is directed to an understanding of the relations between vulnerability to famine and environmental change in Ethiopia, as seen through landscape transformation.
Robert S. Kramer is an Associate Professor of History at St. Norbert College in De Pere, WI, where he teaches courses in Middle Eastern and African history. He is author of Holy City on the Nile: Omdurman During the Mahdiyya, 1885–1898 (2010) and the co-editor of the Historical Dictionary of the Sudan (2002).
Manfred Kropp studied Semitic Languages, Islamic Studies and Medieval and Modern History (Heidelberg and Paris) 1969–1975 and completed his dissertation in 1975. He specializes in Ethiopian History and Literature and Semitic epigraphy. He was professor of Semitic Languages (Lund University) 1990–1991, chair of Islamic and Semitic Studies (Mainz University) 1999–2010, director of the Orient-Institut Beirut (DGIA) 1999–2006, chair européenne (then for Coranic Studies) at the Collège de France 2007–2008. He has published on Ethiopian chronicles and the history of Ethiopia in the Middle Ages, on pre-Islamic Northarabian and Southarabian epigraphy and on Coranic Studies. He is co-editor of the Oriens Christianus and sits on the scientific boards of the Journal of Ethiopian Studies and the Journal of Semitic Studies.
Terje Østebø is assistant professor at the Center for African Studies and the Department of Religion, University of Florida. His research interests include Islam in Southern Ethiopia, contemporary Islam, and Islamic reform in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. His recent publications include Localising Salafism: Religious Change among Oromo Muslims in Bale, Ethiopia (forthcoming, Brill 2011); ‘Growth and Fragmentation: The Salafi Movement in Contemporary Bale, Ethiopia,’ in Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement (Columbia University Press, 2009); and “The Question of Becoming: Islamic Reform Movements in Contemporary Ethiopia,” in the Journal of Religion in Africa 38:4 (2008). [End Page 150]
Anaïs Wion obtained her PhD in history from the University of Paris-1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne) in 2003. She then headed a research program dedicated to the application of standards in XML to Ethiopian manuscripts and led a cooperation program with the National Archives and Library of Ethiopia. She received a post-doctoral grant from the Humboldt foundation to study in Hamburg, Germany, and dedicated her time to the study of archives and charters in order to form the basis for an Ethiopian diplomatic. In 2007 she took a permanent position at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and is currently working at the Centre d’Études des Mondes Africains in Paris. She is co-editor of the journal Afriques. Débats, Méthodes et Terrains d’Histoire. [End Page 151]
