Rate My Professor Iain Gardner

A Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, Iain Gardner is a preeminent specialist in Coptic and Manichaean studies, having edited many original documents from late antiquity as part of projects including the UNESCO-sponsored Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum. His research centers on the history of Manichaeism, including biographical traditions of its founder Mani and community practices revealed through archaeological finds. Key publications encompass The Founder of Manichaeism: Rethinking the Life of Mani (Cambridge University Press, 2020), a historiographical study; The Letters of Mani: A Selection of Manichaean Community Letters and Phraseology in Greek, Coptic, and Latin (Oxford University Press, 2024); Manichaean Texts from the Roman Empire, edited with Samuel N. C. Lieu (Cambridge University Press, 2004); The Kephalaia of the Teacher (E. J. Brill, Leiden, 1995); and contributions to Manichaean Liturgical Texts and Practices (Brepols, 2024). He edited Manichaean texts from the Dakhleh Oasis Project at Kellis, including family letters that illuminate everyday Manichaean life in late antique Egypt. Gardner is co-recipient of the Kerkyasharian and Kayikian Fund Armenian studies research award. He has presented public lectures, such as 'New Research and Sources for the Life of Mani' at the Pourdavoud Institute in 2021, and participated as a visiting scholar at institutions like Leiden University. Through his editions and analyses, Gardner's scholarship has profoundly influenced the academic understanding of Manichaeism and late antique religions.