EX-PATRIA TEAM
Principal Investigator
Ekaterina Nechaeva
Ekaterina Nechaeva is a Junior Professor at the University of Lille, Hub ‘Changing Cultures, Societies and Practices’ and a researcher at the Histoire, Archéologie et Littérature des Mondes Anciens laboratory (HALMA; UMR 8164).
She specialises in Late Antique history, with the focus on international affairs, relations between Rome and the Sasanian Persia, diplomacy, and across-the-border migration and mobility.
DOCTORAL RESEARCHER
Michael David Ethington
Since October 2024 Michael is working on PhD with the Ex-Patria Project. Michael’s dissertation is focused on Tracing Captive Experiences in Late Antique Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia through Syriac sources (4th c. – early 7th c.) under the joint supervision of Ekaterina Nechaeva, Stéphane Benoist and Muriel Debié.
MASTER STUDENT
Maxime Robert
Maxime has a BA 3 in History (University of Lille).
For his dissertation project, he is focusing particularly on the city of Nisibis and its role in the peace treaty of 363. More generally, he is interested in the frontier cities of Late Antiquity.
ACTIVE COLLABORATIONS
Interdisciplinary Collaboration with UMR 9189 CRISTAL on Uncertainty in Historical Knowledge Bases
This ongoing collaboration with Simon Bliudze and Pierre Bourhis takes place within the EX-PATRIA programme and brings together historians and computer scientists to address the structural complexity of historical knowledge. Working continuously as a team—with weekly meetings—we have developed a dedicated ontology for Late Antique prosopography and are currently applying it to the semantic parsing and representation of selected case studies.
Pierre Bourhis
Pierre Bourhis is a member of UMR 9189 CRIStAL and a CNRS researcher. He received his PhD from the Université Paris Sud (2011). He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Computer Science of Oxford University (2011-2013). He is a specialist in databases and knowledge representation in artificial intelligence.
Simon Bliudze
Simon Bliudze is a member of UMR 9189 CRIStAL and researcher at the INRIA Lille – Nord Europe centre; he is also a part-time lecturer in the Computer Science Department at the École polytechnique. He obtained a Master’s degree in Mathematics from the University of St. Petersburg (Russia, 1998), a DEA (Master’s research) in Computer Science from the University of Paris 6 (DEA Algorithmics; France, 2001) and a PhD in Computer Science from the École Polytechnique (France, 2006).
Collaboration on Global Late Antiquity and connectivity across Central, West Asian, and Mediterranean worlds: Ērān Tūrān Hrōm network
Khodadad Rezakhani
This collaboration with Khodadad Rezakhani is grounded in shared research on mobility, imperial frontiers, and connectivity across the Roman–Iranian world. Together, we co-organize the Ērān Tūrān Hrōm network, which promotes interdisciplinary dialogue on Global Late Antiquity through initiatives such as the Ērān Research Forum (Lille, 2024) and the ongoing Ērān Tūrān Hrōm Talk Series. We are also preparing the launch of a new open-access journal to further support collaborative research on West and Central Asia within wider Afro-Eurasian dynamics.
Khodadad Rezakhani is a historian of Late Antique and early medieval West and Central Asia, with a particular focus on the Sasanian Empire. He is currently Principal Investigator of the A City of Many Cities: Ctesiphon and Baghdad project (Gerda Henkel Stiftung) and Lecturer in the International Studies Programme at Leiden University. He received his PhD from UCLA in 2010 and has held academic positions in the UK, US, and Germany, including at Princeton, the LSE, and the Freie Universität Berlin.
Collaboration on Eastern Christianities and Elite Conversion in Late Antique Iran: Sources, Language, and Historiography
Alexey Muraviev
This collaboration with Alexey Muravyev, a leading expert in Eastern Christianities and Late Antique Iran, is part of the EX-PATRIA programme at UMR 8164 HALMA. It includes joint work on Syriac texts—such as the annotated translation of the Acts of Dado, Gabralaha, and Kazo—as well as co-teaching in Classical Georgian. The partnership began with the Autumn School Ad limina orientis (2022) and continues through joint publications and contributions to the Persian Martyrs’ Acts series, enriching global Late Antiquity studies at Lille.
Alexey Muraviev is a Habilitated Professor of Late Antique and Medieval History and Head of the Department of Central Asia and the Caucasus Institute of Asian and African Studies of the Lomonosov Moscow State University. He was a visiting scholar at the EX-PATRIA for three months starting from October 2024.
FORMER MEMBERS
Postdoctoral researchers
Daniel Alford
Daniel Alford was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the EX-PATRIA Project (2023-2025). His research within the project focused on the movement of families and individuals in the frontier zones of Armenia during Late Antiquity, in particular in the fifth century.
He is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC project DOSSE (Domestic Slavery and Sexual Exploitation, 300–900) at the University of Leicester.
Anna Usacheva
Anna Usacheva was a postdoctoral researcher within the EX-PATRIA Project (2023-2025). Her research focused on the role of ecclesiastical institutions and education in shaping mobility and identity along the Roman–Sasanian frontier.
Anna is currently Assistant Professor and PI of the 5-year SNSF-funded ROMAGE project on ageing in the 4th–6th century Roman Empire, based at the Institute of Historical Theology, University of Bern.