Dr. Emanuel Buttigieg obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge and is a Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History in the Department of History at the University of Malta. His first book was Nobility, Faith and Masculinity: The Hospitaller Knights of Malta, c.1580-c.1700 (2011). Together with Dr Simon Phillips of the University of Cyprus he has also co-edited Islands and Military Orders, c.1291-c.1798 (2013). He is also the author of several papers in journals and edited books. At present he is Vice-President ex-officio of the Malta University Historical Society (MUHS) and he was a Committee member of the Malta Historical Society (MHS) between 2011 and 2015.

Dr. Ioanna Christoforaki gained her PhD from the University of Oxford and is Research Fellow in Archaeology at the Research Centre for Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Art at the Academy of Athens. Although her many publications cover a variety of themes, including medieval Rhodes, her specialism is in art-history with a particular emphasis on Cyprus.

Dr. Simon Phillips (Course Organising Committee) was awarded his PhD from the University of Winchester and is a Research Fellow in Late Medieval and Early Modern History at the University of Cyprus. His specialism is on the Knights Hospitaller, both in Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. His publications include The Prior of the Knights Hospitaller in Late Medieval England (2009) and with Emanuel Buttigieg, Islands and Military Orders, c.1291-c.1798 (2013). He is currently researching on Hospitaller Rhodes in the early sixteenth century using archival material from Malta. He has lectured both at the University of Cyprus and University of Malta and has been an external examiner for the University of Malta (MA, PhD) and University of New Mexico (PhD). He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS). 

Dr. Nektarios Zarras (Course Coordinator) teaches Byzantine Art and Archaeology at the University of the Aegean. He was an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Research Fellow (2016-2018) at the University of Münster working on the Identity and Patronage in Byzantium. In 2013 he was awarded the “Maria Theochari” Grant by the Christian Archaeological Society (Greece) for the publication of his Doctoral Thesis, The Iconographic Cycle of the Eothina Gospel Lections in Palaiologan Monumental Painting of the Balkan Peninsula (Thessaloniki 2011) and in the summer of the same year he was Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks. His research focuses on Early Byzantine mosaic pavements and excavation finds, on the Middle and Late Byzantine painting and texts in Constantinople, Greece, Cyprus and Serbia, on epigraphic material (dedicatory inscriptions) and patronage from Macedonia and the islands.