Dr. Alebachew Belay

Founder and current coordinator of the Forum for Medieval Studies in Ethiopia and the Horn (FMSEH)

Dr. Alebachew Belay is an Assistant Professor of Archaeology and Heritage Studies in the Department of History and Heritage Management at Debre Berhan University, Ethiopia, and an associate researcher at the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies (Cfee). He completed his Ph.D. entitled "Megaliths, Landscape, and Society in the Central Highlands of Ethiopia: An Archaeological Research" at the University of Toulouse, France in 2020. In addition to his teaching role at Debre Birhan, Dr. Alebachew serves as an Associate Dean for Internationalization and Partnerships at Debre Berhan University.

He has been part of different archaeological excavation missions in Ethiopia and France. Dr. Alebachew's academic journey has taken him to prestigious institutions, including I Tatti - the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, where he held a fellowship during the academic year 2022-23. Currently, he is an AfOx fellow at Oxford University.

Dr. Alebachew's research focuses on the medieval and historical archaeology of the Central Highlands of Ethiopia. He has presented and published on topics related to archaeology and heritage, with a specific focus on the megalithic culture of the Shay between the 10th-16th centuries. More recently, he has been interested in the circulation of artifacts to and from the Horn of Africa during the Middle Ages within the framework of the Global Middle Ages. 

Dr. Awet Araya

Co-initiator and coordinator of the Forum for Medieval Studies in Ethiopia and the Horn (FMSEH)

Dr. Awet Araya is an Eritrean archaeologist and museum curator. He currently works at the British Museum as Africa Project Curator. His research areas and interests encompass the historical archaeology and heritage of the medieval Horn of Africa, with a focus on its interconnections with the Indian Ocean world and the Gulf.

He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Exeter (UK), where his research delved into archaeological evidence of the African presence in Bahrain spanning from the 7th to the 20th century AD.

Dr. Awet Araya's academic works, both current and previous, can be accessed at this link. For further contact, he can be reached via email at [email protected] or [email protected]. You can also connect with him on Twitter at @awet_t_araya.

Dr. Verena Krebs

Webmaster for the Forum for Medieval Studies in Ethiopia and the Horn (FMSEH)

Verena Krebs is a medieval historian who works on Christian Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa and draws on archaeology, art, and written sources for her scholarship. Her academic journey has taken her across continents: She obtained a bi-national PhD in history from the universities of Konstanz, Germany and Mekelle, Ethiopia in 2014, and spent three years as a research fellow in Jerusalem. Since 2017, she has been professor for "Medieval Cultural Realms and their Entanglements" at Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany, where she also co-directs the Bochum Centre for Mediterranean Studies.

Following the publication of her first book, Medieval Ethiopian Kingship, Craft, and Diplomacy with Latin Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), she was awarded a 2022 David Dan Prize for “overturning traditional narratives of African-European relations and cultural exchange, and painting a vivid picture of the role of art, artisans and relics in state-building and diplomacy in medieval Ethiopia”.  She spent the academic year 2022-23 at the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, where she wrote an introductory textbook called 'Ethiopia' and the World, 330-1500 CE with Ethiopian-American historian Yonatan Binyam for Cambridge University's Elements in Global Medieval History series. She can be contacted via her personal website.