Allen James Fromherz

Dr. Allen Fromherz is a Professor of Mediterranean and Middle East History at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Dartmouth College in 2002 and received his PhD from St. Andrews University in Scotland in Medieval Islamic History in 2006. His first two books, The Almohads: the Rise of an Islamic Empire (IB Tauris) and Ibn Khaldun, Life and Times (Edinburgh University Press) examine the rise of empire in medieval North Africa and Iberia. Dr. Fromherz's most recently completed work The Near West: North Africa and Europe (Edinburgh – Expected end of 2016), examines the history of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish interactions across the Western Mediterranean, especially in Iberia, Morocco, Tunisia, and Italy.  Dr. Fromherz has held several international fellowships from Fulbright, Gerda Henkel Stiftung, the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center, and a senior fellowship from NYU Abu Dhabi. Dr. Fromherz has led and organized four study abroads, including the popular Marvels of Medieval Spain: the Culture and History of Muslims, Jews, and Christians. His regular classes on Medieval Spain and the Mediterranean focus on convivencia, how Muslims, Jews, and Christians, living together, created a common culture that still lives on in Iberia to this day.

David Gies

David T. Gies is Commonwealth Professor of Spanish Emeritus at the University of Virginia and former Chair of his Department. He has published seventeen books, including The Cambridge Companion to Modern Spanish Culture (1999), Theatre and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Spain: Juan de Grimaldi as Impresario and Government Agent (Cambridge, 1988), The Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Spain (Cambridge, 1994), The Cambridge History of Spanish Literature (2004), The Cambridge History of Theatre in Spain (co-edited, 2012), Eros y amistad (2016), and The Eighteenth Centuries: Global Networks of Enlightenment (co-edited, 2017). Author of more than 120 scholarly and 140 book reviews, he edits DIECIOCHO, a journal dedicated to the study of the Spanish Enlightenment, now in its 42nd year.

He has received the University of Virginia Outstanding Teaching Award, the Thomas Jefferson Award, and, in 2007, was named Encomienda de Número de la Orden de Isabel la Católica, a knighthood granted by His Majesty Juan Carlos, King of Spain.

In July 2013, he was elected for a three-year term as President of the International Association of Hispanists, the world's largest professional organization of Spanish scholars, and in September 2015, he was elected Honorary President of Sigma Delta Pi, the Spanish National Honorary Society.

In 2016, he won the prestigious annual Anderson Imbert Prize from the North American Academy of the Spanish Language and was named Corresponding Member of the Spanish Royal Academy in Madrid. In 2019 he joined the Board of the Fundación Duques de Soria.

George Greenia

George Greenia holds his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. A specialist in the languages, works of literature, and linguistics of medieval Spain, he teaches seminars on Spanish Language, Epic and Nationalism, Hispanic Folktales, and Love and Prostitution in Medieval Spain. He is the co-founder of the William & Mary Program in Medieval and Renaissance Studies and founder of the William & Mary Institute for Pilgrimage Studies.

His interest in world pilgrimage spans many times, territories and traditions and he is an authority on the legendary Camino de Santiago in northern Spain where he has trekked over 4,000 miles, half on a bicycle, half on foot. Most summers he takes William & Mary undergraduates backpacking on the pilgrimage trails to conduct interdisciplinary field research. For his promotion of Spanish culture in the United States, in 2007 Greenia was knighted by order of King Juan Carlos I of Spain and granted the Encomienda de la Orden de Isabel la Católica.

Sir George Greenia is a co-founding member of the International Fraternity of the Camino de Santiago, headquartered in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and a member of the Archconfraternity of the Apostle St. James. In 2010 the Concejo de la Enxebre Orden de la Vieira, a confraternity of Galicians in the diaspora who support the Camino de Santiago, named him an “Ángel del Camino”. In 2016 Greenia was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award from American Pilgrims on the Camino for playing a “significant role … in building the pilgrim community within the United States”.  His is the winner of the 2019 Compostela Prize for his “prolific academic trajectory, connection with Galicia and contribution to the dissemination of the Jacobean phenomenon”.

Margaret Monnier

Margaret Monnier is an expert on the Iberian Peninsula and has been living in Spain for the past 25 years.  She has a Masters degree in History from the University of Granada focusing on the coexistence between Jews, Muslims, and Christians during the Medieval period on the Peninsula. For twenty years she has been sharing her knowledge of and passion for Spain and Portugal in the field of educational travel, lecturing for various University programs and at cultural conferences. Her areas of expertise also include the Basque Country, Portuguese history and the Pilgrimage to Santiago.

Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, Margaret also studied Modern Standard Arabic.  Her experience and knowledge Spanish and Portuguese History is as rich and varied as that of the contemporary daily life and cultural details on the Iberian Peninsula.