While small in numbers relative to global Christianity, multi-ethnic Eastern Christian communities are amongst the most ancient natives in the Middle East and the wider West Asia region. Four of the five most important hierarchical centres in Christianity are in this region, whose roots go back to two millennia. These lecture seminars are part of the series on Eastern Christianity held in the last four years, which highlight the rich historical, theological, literary and cultural heritage of Eastern family of churches.

This event is part of the Eastern Christianity Historical, Theological and Cultural Heritage Series.

Conveners: Dr Hratch Tchilingirian and Prof Theo Maarten van Lint.

This event will take place on 6th March at 5pm in the Allen and Overy Room, Pembroke College. It is free and open to the public. 

Irene Giviashvili is a research fellow at Chubinashvili National Centre for Georgian Art History and Heritage Preservation since 2010 and is involved in “Georgian Heritage of Ani,” a Tbilisi State University project.  Until January 2018, she was a visiting fellow at the Russian and East European Studies department of the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies (SIAS) in Oxford.  She received her PhD in History of Art in 2005 from the George Chubinashvili Institute of History of Georgian Art. She has taught Medieval Georgian Art and Architecture at the Archaeology department of Bilkent University, Ankara.  In the last three years she was engaged with the process of evaluation of restoring Ishkhani (Iṣan), a Georgian monument in Turkey. Her research interests include the art and architecture of medieval Georgia, especially the cultural heritage of Georgia within the borders of Turkish and its interconnections with neighbouring Armenia, Byzantium and the Islamic world.