Meseret Oldjira is a PhD candidate in the department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. Her dissertation, Commemoration and Community: Illuminated Gospel Manuscripts in Monastic Ethiopia, 1280-1350 examines the pictorial, textual, historical, and physical components of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Gospels produced in Ethiopia with a focus on manuscripts from the monastery of Dabra Hayq Estifanos. This project aims to shed light on the ways in which Ethiopian monastic communities actively participated in the wider realm of medieval Christian artistic tradition and production, while they remained devoted to the visual articulation of local religious ideas and concerns. Meseret’s research explores the various mechanisms of artistic and cultural exchange across the medieval Mediterranean and north-east Africa. Prior to her doctoral research, she studied Art History (BA, Yale) and Classical Archaeology (MPhil, Oxford).