Lucinda Dirven

Lucinda Dirven is a Professor of Antique Religions at Radboud University. She earned degrees in Art History and Theology from Leiden University in 1990 and 1992, respectively. In 1999, she obtained her Ph.D. at Leiden University with her dissertation ‘The Palmyrenes of Dura-Europos. A Case Study of Religious Interaction in Roman Syria’. She has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam and as an assistant professor in the history departments at both Utrecht University and the University of Amsterdam. She has published on a variety of topics related to antique religions, especially during the Hellenistic and Roman periods in Syria and Iraq (Palmyra, Dura-Europos, Hatra) and the Roman West (especially the cult of Mithras). Her focus is on transitory periods, such as the transition from the traditional Mesopotamian and Egyptian to the ‘global’ Graeco-Roman world and the transition from a religious pluralistic world to a Christian world.