Emily Chesley is a historian of the late ancient Mediterranean. She studies women and gender in the Syriac world, the relationship between religion and society, and cross-pollinations between Greek, Syriac, and Arabic Christianities.

Emily holds a BA from Azusa Pacific University, an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary, and an MA in History from Princeton University. She has also studied at the University of Oxford and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA).

Emily was awarded a 2022–2023 Fulbright Greece-Turkey Joint Research Award for dissertation research, and she will be affiliated with Boğaziçi University and the ASCSA for the academic year. She was previously a Junior Fellow at the Library of Congress involved with the 2016 project to digitize microfilm from Saint Catherine’s Library on Mt. Sinai, and in 2018 she received the Dr. Jack Jallo and Mrs. Gage Johnston Fellowship in Digital Humanities at Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute for work testing a Syriac OCR system. Her research and studies have also been supported by the Stanley J. Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, the Program in the Ancient World, and the Committee for the Study of Late Antiquity.

In addition to her research, Emily furthers public history as a co-host and producer for the podcast Women Who Went Before. She volunteers at Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute and serves on the English Literary Critics Committee for the Syriac-English Bible.

Photo credit: Sameer Khan/Fotobuddy, LLC