Marie-Laure Davigo
Marie-Laure Davigo is an independent researcher in art history and archaeology of the Byzantine world and the Christian East.
Holder of a degree (mention Très Bien) from the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE/PSL) in religious studies, she defended her dissertation in 2022 under the supervision of Ioanna Rapti on « The Icons of the Coptic Orthodox Churches of the Diocese of Qousseya-Meir, Metropolis of Asyut in Upper Egypt ». She is currently completing a degree at the Institute for Eastern Christianity (ICO) in Paris and pursues her research at the Byzantine Library of the Collège de France and at Ioanna Rapti’s seminar at the EPHE.
Her research focuses on the art of the Christian East, especially in Egypt and Jerusalem under the Ottoman Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries, and on the aesthetic, theological and identity-related stakes of Coptic icons. A scientific catalogue of unpublished icons from the diocese of Qousseya-Meir is forthcoming with the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology (IFAO) in Cairo, and an article on the painter Anastasi al-Qudsī al-Rūmī and his unpublished icons in the Church of Archangel Gabriel at Qousseya is to appear in Eastern Christian Art (Peeters, Louvain).
An icon conservator trained at the Byzantine Museum of Athens (1980) and laureate of the Bleustein-Blanchet Foundation for Vocation, she worked for the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) in cooperation with the Coptic Orthodox Church (2003), for the Sacred Art Centre of the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK, Lebanon, 2004), and carried out the inventory of the medieval Christian heritage of Albania as well as of icons in northern Syria for Mgr Edelby. She is also interested in the geopolitics of the Near East and in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue.
At the Pluriel Congress in Cordoba in February 2026, she delivered a paper entitled : « The Kaaba and the Holy Sepulchre in image: memory of pilgrimage ».
Resources related to
History
publication
The Recognition of a Hummingbird. Essays on Interreligious Dialogue and Missionary Work (2007-2025)
- Rémi Caucanas
Published in May 2026 by PISAI (Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies, Rome), this collection brings together the essays of Rémi Caucanas on interreligious dialogue and missionary wor...
videos
From Lavigerie to PISAI: The Institutional History of the Missionaries of Africa’s Engagement with Islam
Delivered on 21 May 2026 at the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies (PISAI) in Rome, this lecture opens the series of conferences marking the institute's centenary (1926-2026). Fr. ...
publication
Maurice Borrmans and the Crisis of Christian-Muslim Dialogue. Islamic studies in Question?
- Florence Javel
In 2025-2026, we mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council and of the declaration Nostra aetate (28 October 1965). One century earlier, in October 1925, Maurice Borrmans was born ...
publication
Islam and Muslims. Doctrines, Schools of Thought, and Current Trends
- Michel Younès
Publication date: April 16, 2026. Islam, as a historical, religious, and civilizational reality, is difficult to define. It can be perceived as a form of political governance, an expression of fait...
publication
Canon and Censorship in Islamic Intellectual History
- Amir Dziri
Published in De Gruyter’s series “Islam: Thought, Culture, and Society” (vol. 16, 2026), this collective volume is edited by Mohammad Gharaibeh and Bacem Dziri (Humboldt University of Berlin)...
videos
Maurice Borrmans (1925-2017), an Islamologist Defending Christian-Muslim Dialogue
- Florence Javel
On 19 February 2026, in the Maurice Borrmans Library of the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies (PISAI) in Rome, Florence Javel, who holds a PhD in theology from the Catholic Univer...
videos
Landscape and architecture as occasions of contemplation and of interreligious dialogue in the travel narratives of the Sufi ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī
Paper presented at the fifth international congress of the University Platform for Research on Islam (Pluriel), held in Cordoba from 10 to 14 February 2026 on the theme "Ethics and Aesthetics in Is...
videos
Aesthetics of living together: visualising an Islamic ethics of the other in al-Andalus
Paper presented at the fifth international congress of the University Platform for Research on Islam (Pluriel), held in Cordoba from 10 to 14 February 2026 on the theme "Ethics and Aesthetics in Is...