Head of Department:

Dr Dennis Mizzi

B.A. (Hons), M.St. (Oxon.), D.Phil. (Oxon.)

Post: Senior Lecturer in Hebrew and Ancient Judaism and coordinator of the Hebrew and Near Eastern Studies programme

Research Interests: Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls; Judaism in the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods (3rd century BCE-7th century CE), with a focus on both texts and archaeology; ancient Jewish halakha, with a focus on purity practices; ancient Jewish material culture, with a special interest in chalkstone vessels, stone and metal artefacts, and small finds; ancient synagogues; Hebrew and Aramaic.

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Professor Anthony J. Frendo (on sabbatical leave 1st October 2018-30th September 2019)

B.Phil. (Gallarate); B.Th. (Frank-on-Main); L.anc. Ori. (Rome); L.S.S. (Rome); D.Lett. (Rome); Ph.D. (Lond.)

Professor in Near Eastern Archaeology and the Hebrew Bible (also member of the Department of Classics and Archaeology)

Post: Professor

Research Interests: Near eastern archaeology with a focus on the emergence of ancient Israel as evidenced in the Hebrew Bible and Syro-Palestinian archaeology; Northwest-Semitic languages with a focus on Classical Hebrew and Phoenician-Punic; Biblical Studies (mainly Hebrew Bible); Phoenician-Punic inscriptions from the Maltese islands, especially those retrieved from the site of Tas-Silg (co-director of excavations there 1996-1999) and which I am preparing for publication; currently finishing a book on a methodological study of the relationship between text and artefact with special reference to pre-exilic Israel.

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Prof. Martin R. Zammit

B.A. (Gen.), B.A. (Hons.), Ph.D.

Post: Associate Professor and coordinator Arabic programme

Research interests: Prof. Martin R. Zammit’s research interests include Semitic studies, with a focus on Qur’ānic Arabic and Syriac, Arabic philology in general and Arabic dialectology in particular. Prof. Zammit is the co-translator of the Qur’ān in the Maltese language and has also published a Syriac Reader.

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Dr Salvatore Giuffrè 

B.A. (Hons), M.A. East Asian Studies (Bologna). Ph.D.(Lyon III)                                          

Post: Lecturer in Chinese and coordinator of the Chinese programme.

Research Interests: 

• Chinese Literature
• Comparative literature
• Romance Philology
• Romanticism
• Literary Modernism and Aesthetics
• Modern Japanese Literature

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Ms Wei Chen

B.A. (Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language) Sichuan University, M.A. (Chinese Linguistics and Applied Linguistics) Xiamen University

Post: Assistant Lecturer in Chinese  

Research Interests:

• The History of Chinese Linguistics 
  
• Missionary Linguistics (Chinese)
  
• Classic Chinese Literature
  

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