Madeleine Scopello

Biography

Madeleine Scopello is an internationally renowned scholar of Gnosticism and Manichaeism. She owns an Habilitation (University of Paris Sorbonne) in History of ancient Christianity and is first class Directeur de recherche emerita at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. In 2016 she was appointed Directeur d’études at the cole Pratique des Hautes d’études, Sciences religieuses (chair of Gnosis and Manichaeism), on the nomination of the President of the French Republic (emerita since 2020). She has received consistently high praise in national and international scholarly circles for her long-term work on the role of women in Gnostic and Manichaean movements, and collaborates regularly with leading Australian researchers. Scopello has produced an impressive body of publications, ranging from ‘Femme, Gnose et Manicheisme: De L’espace Mythique Au Territoire Du Réel (1995) to the conference volume ‘Women in Occidental and Oriental Manichaeism’ (2022). Among the main fields of her research are the influence of esoteric mystical Judaism on Gnosticism, and the polemical religious literature produced against Gnostic and Manichaean doctrines in the first centuries CE.

She has received a number of honours that recognise her research standing, including Corresponding Fellow of Institut de France (Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres), Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académies (the French national order for distinguished academics and figures in the world of culture and education) and Chevalier dans l’Ordre National du Mérite (the French national order that rewards the distinguished merits given to the Nation).