Anthony J. Watson is Master of Islamic and Asian History at Woodberry Forest and Director of that school’s new Silk Road Program. He has a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge and a M.Div. in Islamic Studies from Harvard. Much of his primary research focuses on imperial power and authority and the Church of the East. His historical work focuses on the travel narratives, chronicles, hagiographies, and intellectual histories contextualizing interaction between cultures on the medieval Silk Road, and in Persia and Central Asia.
Prior to arriving at Woodberry Forest, he served as an Assistant Dean and Associate Director of Middle East Studies at Brown University. He has taught at Brown, Johns Hopkins, McDaniel, Harvard, Cambridge, and SOAS. He has published several articles and chapters on medieval history and religion and has co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Medieval History and serves on two editorial boards in his field. He is currently completing a monograph entitled Mongol Pluralism, and has started research on a the Battle of Talas and a revised translation of the History of Mar Yaballaha III.