Professor Giles E. M. Gasper was educated at the University of Oxford and the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto. He has been in post at Durham University since 2004, in the History Department and with close links to Theology & Religion and is currently Deputy Executive Dean (Research) for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. His areas of interest are the religious, intellectual, and cultural histories of the European Middle Ages, and its inheritances from Late Antiquity and the Early Church. Creation and the Natural World, the Economy of Salvation, and concepts of Order form his main themes of interest. These are explored through monastic and scholastic theology and science, historical writing, literary texts and craft and culinary manuals. Recent publications include a 5-volume series with Oxford University Press, The Scientific Works of Robert Grosseteste, featuring new editions, English translations, and interdisciplinary commentary.

Dr Sigbjørn Sønnesyn is Lecturer in Medieval Christianity at the University of Bristol. His childhood at a sheep farm makes the story of the shepherds of Bethlehem particularly evocative for him. He was educated at Bergen in Norway, and has subsequently worked in Copenhagen, Durham, and Oslo before joining the staff at Bristol this summer. His main research interests concern the ways in which human beings in the Middle Ages understood the world around them and their roles in it.