About
The Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East (SSCLE), is an international society of scholars founded in 1980. Its members include scholars from across the generations, whose research covers all aspects of the field including theology, law, literature, art, architecture, numismatics, medicine, social history, archaeology as well as cultural, political, and economic themes.
The SSCLE aims at promoting research and fieldwork, coordinating resources, informing its members of resources and ongoing studies, and promoting awareness of its members and the interested public in developments in the field. Currently the society has over 450 paying members from five continents and 41 countries.
The SSCLE also organises a major international conference every four years, as well as sessions on crusading history at other conferences where appropriate. Previous conferences have included events in Jerusalem, Istanbul, Avignon, Cácares, Odense and London.
SSCLE Committee
President
Jonathan Phillips
Jonathan Phillips is Professor of Crusading History at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of numerous books on the crusades, most recently The Life and Legend of the Sultan Saladin. He is also the General Editor of the forthcoming Cambridge History of the Crusades, 3 volumes, 2026.
Secretary
Nikolaos Chrissis
Nikolaos Chrissis is Assistant Professor of Medieval European History at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. His research interests and publications revolve around Byzantine-Western relations in the context of crusading and, more broadly, intercultural contacts and identity formation in the medieval Mediterranean. He is also Associate Editor of Crusades.
Treasurer
Danielle Park
Danielle Park is the author of the monograph Papal Protection and the Crusader, which drew attention to women on the home front. She is writing her next book on Queen Melisende and King Fulk of Jerusalem.
Co-Editor, Crusades
Iris Shagrir
Iris Shagrir is professor of medieval history, and currently the Rector (Provost) of the Open University of Israel. She specializes in medieval social and cultural history, Christian-Muslim relations, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, history of Jerusalem, pilgrimage and medieval naming patterns.
Co-Editor, Crusades
Christoph T. Maier
Christoph T. Maier is based at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. He has published widely on crusade preaching and propaganda and is presently researching the historiography of the crusades. He is co-editor of Crusades together with Iris Shagrir.
Conference Coordinator
Myra M. Bom
Myra Bom is an Honorary Research Associate of Royal Holloway, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and an editor of crusades-regesta.com. She also gives supervision in medieval history to undergraduates at the University of Cambridge. Her research interests are in the military orders, the crusades, royal power and France during the twelfth century.
Bulletin Editor
Ahmed M. A. Sheir
Ahmed Sheir is a Research Associate in Medieval History at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich and an affiliated Assistant Professor at Damanhour University, Egypt. He received his PhD from Philipps-Universität Marburg in 2021. His research focuses on the Crusades from entangled Arabic–Latin perspectives, the modern Arabic legacy and historiography of the Crusades, and Jewish–Muslim relations through the Cairo Genizah documents.
Website Editor
Charlotte Gauthier
Charlotte Gauthier is a Research Assistant at Oxford and Royal Holloway, University of London and a Visiting Lecturer at City St George's, University of London. Her research focuses on the political, intellectual, and economic history of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century crusading, especially on European anti-Ottoman diplomacy.
Officer for Postgraduate Members
Anna Gutgarts
Anna Gutgarts is a lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Haifa. She specializes in Jerusalem under Latin rule, and more broadly, cities and urbanization in the Latin East and the Medieval Mediterranean.
Co-Social Media Editor
Stephan Knott
Stephan Knott is a PhD Candidate at the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on the Fourth Crusade and the early years of Frankish Greece. He is particularly interested in the intersections of history, literature, and the imaginary.
Co-Social Media Editor
Lorenzo Mercuri
Lorenzo Mercuri is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Sapienza University of Rome and at the LaMOP-Laboratoire de médiévistique occidentale de Paris (CNRS/Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne). His research interests focus on medieval architecture and urban topography in the 12th and 13th centuries, with particular attention to the military religious orders and the relations between architecture, written sources, liturgy, and memory.
Committee Member
Kurt Villads Jensen
Kurt Villads Jensen is professor in Medieval History at Stockholm University and director of the Centre for Medieval Studies. He has worked with religious and cultural encounters in Baltic and Iberia, and with Scandinavian history in a comparative perspective.
Committee Member
Caroline Smith
Caroline Smith is an Affiliated Scholar of the Center for Medieval Studies at Fordham University, New York. A historian of medieval France and the crusades, she is the translator of Chronicles of the Crusades (Penguin Classics, 2008). Recent scholarly activities include contributions to the volume A Crusader's Death and Life in Acre: The 1266 Account-Inventory of Eudes of Nevers, edited by Anne E. Lester and Laura K. Morreale (Cornell University Press, 2025).
