Samantha Kelly (Ph.D, Northwestern University) is Professor of History at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Her research has focused on the history of late-medieval Italy and of relations between Latin Europe and Ethiopia from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century, with a particular interest in the intersection of religion and politics. She has served as Associate Chair of the History Department and Director of the Program in Medieval Studies at Rutgers University, as Councillor of the Medieval Academy of America, and as Visiting Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. The recipient of fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies – Villa I Tatti, the Mellon Foundation, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, among others, she co-founded and currently co-organizes the “Ethiopian Studies in North America” virtual workshop series.