Paul Dilley

Paul Dilley holds the Erling B. "Jack" Holtsmark Associate Professorship in Classics and serves as Department Executive Officer (DEO) of Religious Studies at the University of Iowa. He earned his PhD from Yale University in 2008. His research focuses on Late Antique religions, particularly early Christianity and Manichaeism, integrating digital humanities, cognitive studies, and philology. Notable projects include editing the Dublin Kephalaia Codex, a 5th-century Coptic manuscript of Manichaean texts, and advancing digital methods like X-ray tomography for manuscript analysis.

His academic contributions extend to books such as Monasteries and the Care of Souls in Late Antique Christianity (2017) and co-editing Mani at the Court of the Persian Kings (2014). He has led grants from NEH, Mellon, and others, and his work has been featured in New York Times and Newsweek. Teaching interests include global manuscript cultures and digital humanities, with courses like "Big Ideas: Information, Society and Culture" and "Global Manuscript Cultures" co-taught with interdisciplinary colleagues.

Research initiatives include the Mellon Sawyer Seminar on pre-modern Eurasian manuscript exchanges and collaborations with computer scientists on X-ray tomography. Awards include senior fellowships at the Mellon Society of Fellows and fellowships from Alexander von Humboldt and Citizens and Scholars (Newcombe). He chairs the SBL Digital Humanities Program Unit and co-edits volumes on Linked Open Data for ancient studies.

Recent work combines cutting-edge technology with ancient texts, such as recovering hidden layers in manuscripts and analyzing large literary corpora via computational methods. His interdisciplinary approach bridges classical philology, religious studies, and digital innovation, shaping modern scholarly practices in textual analysis and cultural history.