Publications
Ishac, E.A. (ed.), Praying with Tears in Eastern Christian Traditions, with an Introduction by Sebastian P. Brock, Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2026.
Akhrass, S.R., Ishac, E.A., and Renhart, E., Echoes of Ink and Faith. A Catalogue of Sixty Selected Manuscripts from the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate, Damascus, Uni-Press Graz, Graz 2026.
Ishac, E.A., "Sinodul Ecumenic de la Niceea (325) în politica sinodală siriacă" Ortodoxia (Revistă a Patriarhiei Române) 2nd ser., 17, no. 2 (April–June 2025), pp. 205-224 (in Romanian, published July 2026).
Ishac, E.A., "An Overview of Nicaea 325 Council in the Syriac Tradition" Around the Council of Nicaea: Historical-Theological Context and Eastern Reception, edited by Matteo Poiani and Maurizio Girolami, Vienna: Lit Verlag 2026, pp. 129-157.
Ishac, E.A., “Assemani and the Syrian ‘Orthodox’ Fathers” Parole de l’Orient 51 (2025), 329-343, Kaslik.
Ishac, E.A., “Synodality and Liturgy: The First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea 325 in the Syriac Tradition” The Liturgical Magazine 54 (2025) 156-169 (in Arabic).
Ishac, E.A., “Expensive Blessings in the Syriac Liturgical Tradition” On Earth as in Heaven? Liturgy, Materiality, and Economics, edited by Melanie C. Ross, Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press 2025, pp. 153-179.
Ishac, E.A., “The First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea 325 in Syriac Synodal Politics” Annales Historiae Conciliorum 53 (2023), pp. 69-86. [published in December 2024]
Ishac, E.A., “Manuscripts Without Borders: Syriac Migrating Written Heritage” Mfaḥmono Kashiro: Perspectives on the Syriac Bible in Honor of Andreas Juckel, edited by George Anton Kiraz and Hannah Stork, (Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies 71), Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2024, pp. 35-56.
Ishac, E.A., “A ‘Colophon’ or a ‘Chronicle’? A Lengthy Garshuni-Arabic Colophon” Literary Snippets: A Colophon Reader, edited by Sabine Schmidtke and George Anton Kiraz, Gorgias Press 2024, pp. 101-145.
Melloni, A. and Ishac, E.A., Corpus Christianorum Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Generaliumque Decreta V.1, The Synods of the Syrian Orthodox Church, Brepols, Turnhout 2023.
Melloni, A. and Ishac, E.A., Corpus Christianorum Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Generaliumque Decreta V.2, The Synods of the Church of the East, Brepols, Turnhout 2023.
Ishac, E.A., “Liturgy in Times of Disasters in the Prayers of the Syriac Church of Antioch,” The Liturgical Magazine 51 (2023), [in Arabic], pp. 21-30.
Ishac, E.A., “In Colophons and Margins of the Syriac Liturgical Manuscripts” Literary Snippets: Colophons Across Space and Time, edited by Sabine Schmidtke and George Anton Kiraz, Gorgias Press 2023, pp. 187-199.
Presentations
June 2026: "Preaching and Communal Identity: Contextualizing Medieval and Early Modern Syriac Liturgical Homilies", Preaching and Preachers as Brokers of (Inter) Communal Dynamics across Late Medieval and Early Modern Eurasia, CEU. Vienna, Austria.
June 2026: "ATR/HTR for Syriac Garshunography", Transkribus Expert:innentreffen 2026, Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities (ACDH), Austrian Academy of Sciences. Vienna, Austria.
June 2026: "HTR for Modelling Syriac Colophonology: Opportunities and Challenges", Automated Text Recognition of Historical Sources: From convolutional neural networks to vision language models, Austrian Academy of Sciences. Vienna, Austria.
June 2026: "Mar Theodosius Estefanos Bar Yuḥanon: A Wandering Syrian Orthodox Bishop of Szentes, Hungary (1934–1936)", "Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas" or "Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth" Studies in Philosophy, Theology and Religion in Honor of György Geréby and István Perczel, CEU. Vienna, Austria.
June 2026: "Status Report on the Syriac Liturgy Corpus Project", Tenth International Congress of the Society of Oriental Liturgy, School of Theology. Nicosia, Cyprus.
May 2026: "Voices from the Margins: Syriac Manuscript Colophonology", corso magistrale di Lingua e Letteratura Siriaca, Ca' Foscari University of Venice. Venice, Italy.
May 2026: "Bridging the Gaps: Public AI Models for Under-Resourced Syriac Scripts", Digital Frontiers: Artificial Intelligence and the Study of the Ancient World, Austrian Academy of Sciences. Vienna, Austria.
May 2026: "Female Scribes and Patrons in Syriac Manuscripts: A Colophonological Approach", 61st International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS 2026), Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. Michigan, USA.
March 2026: "Syriac HTR and ATR Project Examples and Applications for Near and Middle Eastern Manuscripts", Expert Panel: Handwritten & Automated Text Recognition for Historical Sources Tools and Applications in Western and Eastern Traditions, Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto. Toronto, Canada.
March 2026: "Between Turfan and Deir Al-Surian: Holy Martyrs Sergius and Bacchus across Eurasia", Sanctity and Ritual Remembrance. An international conference on Christian sources on the development of communal practices of memory from late antiquity through the medieval period., Austrian Academy of Sciences. Vienna, Austria.
Feb. 2026: "Scribing Habits or Practicing Prayers in Syriac Liturgical Manuscripts?" International Conference on Syriac Manuscripts: New Perspectives on Codicology and Philology, Pontifical Oriental Institute and Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum). Rome, Italy.
Nov. 2025: "Occasional Syriac Prayers for Therapy", International Conference on Beyond the Byzantine Euchologion: Priestly Prayers and People's Concerns in the Christian East, Austrian Academy of Sciences. Vienna, Austria.
Nov. 2025: Respondent to Dr. François Pacha Miran's lecture “Shaping the Lectionary: Liturgical Readings and the Genesis of Syriac Manuscript Illumination (11th–13th c.)”, Yale Late Antique and Byzantine Art and Architecture Lecture Series (online). University of Yale, USA.
Nov. 2025: “Syriac Manuscripts Crossing via Jerusalem” Made in Jerusalem: Greek and Syriac Manuscripts Produced in the Holy Land, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. Mainz, Germany.
Sep. 2025: “The Syriac Nicaea 325 in a New Critical Edition” 1700th Anniversary of the Council of Nicaea International Conference, Catholic University of Erbil. Ankawa, Iraq.
Sep. 2025: “Syriac Synodal Canons Crossing Borders” Legal Texts on the Move. Normative Texts Crossing Boundaries in the Medieval World International Conference, Austrian Academy of Sciences. Vienna, Austria.
Sep. 2025: “Mapping Connections in Early Medieval Syriac Colophons” Closing ERC Conference of the RELEVEN Project: Re-evaluating the Eleventh Century - Movements, Connections, and Perspectives, University of Vienna. Vienna, Austria.
Sep. 2025: Respondent to Carlo Emilio Biuzzi's lecture “A Codicological Enquiry into Syriac Legal Manuscripts from the 6th to the 8th Century”, in the framework of the ERC Project: RevIdEM, Austrian Academy of Sciences. Vienna, Austria.
July 2025: “Syriac Manuscripts as Agents of Mobility: Tracing Cultural Transmission through Colophonology” Moving Byzantium, I: Manuscripts and Arts at the Margins of the Byzantine World, Leeds International Medieval Congress (IMC) 2025, University of Leeds. Leeds, UK.
June 2025: “The Presence of Nicaea 325 in Syriac Liturgical Prayers” Nicaea and the Church of the Third Millennium: Towards Catholic-Orthodox Unity, Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. Rome, Italy.
May 2025: “Who is the Public in a Digital Age? Democratization of HTR—Syriac as Example” The Digital Orientalist's 2025 Virtual Conference: AI and the Digital Humanities for the Study of Asia, Africa, and Oceania, (keynote lecture).
May 2025: “Public Hand-Written Text Recognition (HTR) for Syriac with Transkribus: State of the Art”, Freie Universität Berlin, Seminar für Semitistik und Arabistik. Berlin, Germany.
April 2025: “Towards a New Critical Edition of the Syriac Texts of Nicaea 325”, Nicaea 2025: Event, Context, Reception. International Symposium, Augustinianum and Angelicum. Rome, Italy.
Feb. 2025: “Syriac Liturgical Heritage in Egypt: A General Overview”, in the 11th International Symposium of the Saint Mark Foundation on Coptic Liturgy. Cairo, Egypt.
Jan. 2025: “Project First Results of ISP: Identifying Scattered Puzzles of Syriac Liturgy”, in the workshop: Byzantine Prayer Books (Euchologia). Austrian Academy of Sciences Vienna, Austria.
Oct. 2024: “Liturgical Syriac Fragments along the Silk Road”, in The International Conference on Turfan Study: New Developments on the Research of Jingjiao. Turpan, China.
Sep. 2024: “Dialogue and Fire in a Fragmentary Syriac Martyrdom Narrative”, Oxford Interfaith Forum. Chair: Professor Sebastian Brock, University of Oxford. Oxford, UK.
Sep. 2024: “Kothubo Suryoyo: A Syriac Scribe ‘from Athur and Nineveh’: Mattai Bar Fawlos”, in the First Athra Syriac Symposium, organized by the General Directorate of Syriac Culture. Erbil.
July 2024: “Syrian Orthodox Church Fathers in Alexandria: Severus of Antioch and Jacob of Edessa”, (two lectures for Tyrannus Orthodox Theological Seminary). Alexandria, Egypt.
June 2024: “Paratexts in Syriac Liturgical Manuscripts”, in Paratexts in Premodern Writing Cultures, organized by Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams, Ghent University. Ghent, Belgium.
May 2024: “Syriac Liturgical Texts with Multi-Touch Attributions”, in Misattributions and Forgeries in Middle Eastern Manuscript Traditions, Institute for Advanced Studies - Princeton (IAS) and Institute for Medieval Research (IMAFO), Austrian Academy of Sciences. Vienna, Austria.
Oct. 2023: “Nicaea 325 in the East and West Syriac Synods”, in From Ctesiphon to Toledo: A Comparative View on Early Church Councils in East and West, Central European University. Vienna.
Posters
June 2025: Poster presentation in the international conference AI meets Humanities & Social Sciences, 23-25 June 2025. Poster title: "AI Unlocks Syriac Manuscript Texts: The First Public HTR Model on Transkribus", Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria.
March 2025: Poster presentation in 2nd Poster Session, Cluster of Excellence: EurAsian Transformations, 21 March 2025. Poster title: "Liturgical Syriac Fragments along Silk Road", Central European University, Vienna, Austria.
