Andy Hilkens (PhD in History, Ghent University, 2014) is a cultural historian of the pre-modern Eastern Mediterranean and the Caucasus. He specializes in intercultural interaction and its results, positive (circulation of knowledge and literature, translation of texts, multilingualism, and religious dialogue) as well as negative (polemics and religious conflict), with a particular focus on the entangled history of Syriac and Armenian churches. His research is located at the intersection of Syriac, Byzantine, Armenian and Coptic studies: Syriac historiography, Syriac and Armenian hagiography, Syriac and Armenian parabiblical literature, the Armenian reception of Syriac literature and vice versa, debates between Syriac and Armenian Miaphysite Christians in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Syriac-Armenian bilingualism, and the Armenian and Coptic reception of Ephrem Graecus.
In the context of RevIdEM he investigates the representation of the desert fathers in the Armenian menologion of Hovsep‘ of Constantinople (991-992). He also teaches Coptic at the University of Vienna. He has previously held a Newton International Fellowship at the University of Oxford and fellowships at the university of Florence, Ghent and Jerusalem. He was also a scientific collaborator in the LOEWE-Cluster Minority Studies: Language and Identity at the University of Frankfurt.