Shiferaw Bekele is Professor Emeritus of Ethiopian History at Addis Ababa University where he had been educated and where he also taught Colonial African History and Modern Ethiopian History. He has been engaged in research on the social, political and economic history of modern Ethiopia since the mid-18th century.

He has over fifty articles on various topics published in international journals and collective books. His most notable essay is the "The State in the Zemene Mesafint: An Essay in Reinterpretation," (1990) which has been the subject of much discussion in scholarly circles. He has also edited and co-edited several books of which A Modern Economic History of Ethiopia (1995) continues to arouse much interest. He has advised doctoral students and has sat on doctoral dissertation examinations in Addis Ababa University and in universities in France, Norway, Sweden and the US.

He was a contributor and field specialist to the five volumes of Encyclopaedia Aethiopica. He has sat on advisory editorial boards of many national and international journals. He served Addis Ababa University as department chairman, and by sitting on various committees. He has sat on organizing committees of several international conferences held in Ethiopia and in various countries abroad. He is a founding fellow of the Ethiopian Science Academy and a fellow of the Ambrosiana Academy (Milan). 

© Abba Daniel Assefa

Abba Daniel Assefa is Associate professor in Addis Abeba University (AAU: Linguistics and Philology Department) and director of Tibeb Research and Retreat Center.

His research interests include 1 Enoch, Second Temple Judaism and Origins of Christianity, Ethiopian biblical hermeneutics, the textual history of the Ethiopic Bible, and apocalyptic literature.


He is author of l’Apocalypse des animaux (1 Hen 85-90): une propagande militaire? (Leiden: Brill, 2007) and Space and Time in 1 Enoch 1-36; A Narrative Critical Analysis, 2018 (UNISA, Unpublished dissertation).



Professor Sebsebe Demissew is a distinguished scientist of plant biology and biodiversity management in Addis Ababa University’s College of Natural Sciences. He has been involved since 1980 in teaching and postgraduate training as well as in research in the areas of biodiversity, ethnobotany, ecology, and systematics. He has numerous publications to his name – no less than seven books and well over two hundred scientific articles.

He is a winner of prestigious awards and honors for his achievements in research: The Kew International Medal (Oct.2016) from the celebrated Kew Gardens of London, the 2020 Prof Luigi Tartufari International Prize for Biological Sciences from the esteemed Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei of Italy, the 2021 Jose Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany from the well-known Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, USA, and the highly reputed 2022 Linnean Society Medal (Botany) of London. He was made a member of internationally renowned science academies such as the Danish Academy of Sciences (2008), the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of the UK (2018).


400th anniversary of Hiob Ludolf
Abba Gorgoryos (1595 - 1658)
Hiob Ludolf (1624 - 1704)
Research area
Abba Daniel Assefa
Prof. Shiferaw Bekele
Prof. Sebsebe Demissew
Short Bio of the researchers
A glimpse into the symposium
Introduction to exhibition