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.

Beebe Bahrami

Beebe Bahrami is an award-winning writer and anthropologist who specializes in the intersecting worlds of European, Atlantic, and Mediterranean cultures, from prehistory to the present, especially in France, Spain, and Portugal.

Beebe earned her BA from the University of Colorado and her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. She wrote her doctorate on oral history, memory, and identity among the descendants of medieval Spanish Jews and Muslims living today in Morocco or reclaiming their roots in Spain after five centuries of exile. She received a Fulbright to complete this work, which also led her to explore the Camino de Santiago, a medieval pilgrimage road that came into being because of the dynamics between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia. Since, with her main focus on sacred traditions, religion, and pilgrimage, Beebe has walked, researched, and gathered tales along nearly 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) of pilgrimage routes across Europe.

As a part of Beebe’s anthropological training at Penn, in addition to cultural anthropology, she also trained in linguistics, physical anthropology, and archaeology. Her research and writing often cross several disciplines. She loves to bring to life and show the complex intersection of many influences that define the cultures of Portugal, Spain, and France. This includes their prehistory and history, languages, food and wine traditions, folklore and festivals, religious and sacred life, work and daily life, and art and architecture (she especially focuses on Romanesque, which she considers books in stone).

Her books include The Spiritual Traveler Spain—A Guide to Sacred Sites and Pilgrim Routes (Paulist Press), Cafe Oc—A Nomad's Tale of Magic, Mystery, and Finding Home in the Dordogne of Southwestern France (Shanti Arts), Cafe Neandertal—Excavating Our Past in One of Europe's Most Ancient Places (Counterpoint), Historic Walking Guides Madrid (DestinWorld), and most recently, the comprehensive guidebook, Moon Camino de Santiago (Hachette). She also is working on two new books. One, The Atlantic Celts, is a co-authored gastronomic history of Atlantic Europe from Iberia to Ireland. The second, The Way of the Wild Goose, is an exploration of a medieval mystery on the Camino de Santiago that still captures the modern pilgrim’s imagination today.

Nathanael Greene

Nathanael Greene teaches courses on the history of Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, and has written books on aspects of European and French history. He has traveled frequently in France and studied in Paris as a Fulbright Scholar and as a Guggenheim Fellow. Dr. Greene is a graduate of Brown University and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University. A faculty member at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut since 1963, he has been a professor of history at Wesleyan since 1974 and served as Vice-President of Academic Affairs for 13 years. Professor Greene has led several Smithsonian tours to France.