Marie-Laure Derat is a historian and director of research at CNRS (Orient et Méditerranée, Paris). A specialist of medieval Ethiopia, she is particularly interested in the Christian kingdom in terms of the territorial organization of powers, Christianization processes and religious interactions, using a combination of textual documentation and archaeological data. She leads the historical and archaeological mission to the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela. She contributed to the Companion to Medieval Ethiopia published by Brill in 2020 and is preparing a English edition of the book published with Claire Bosc-Tiessé, Lalibela, site rupestre chrétien d’Ethiopie, Presses universitaires du Mirail, 2019.
