Union Académique Internationale

President of the UAI (2017-2021)

Professor Samuel N.C. Lieu FBA, FAHA is the current President of the International Union of Academies and a Bye Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge. He is also Emeritus Inaugural Distinguished Professor of Ancient History at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. He was previously Professor of Ancient History and Classical Studies at Warwick University (UK). Born in Hong Kong, he was an Exhibitioner at Emmanuel College Cambridge and took his DPhil in Ancient History at Oxford where he was also a Junior Research Fellow of Wolfson College (Oxford). He was successively Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader and Professor of Ancient History at Warwick University in the UK. In 1996 he was appointed to the Edwin Judge Chair of Ancient History at Macquarie University in Sydney and in 2010 he was awarded the title of Inaugural Distinguished Professor by the same university. Sam Lieu is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and has since 1998 been a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales since 2015 and an Honorary Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities since 2018. In July 2021 he was elected to a Fellowship of the British Academy. He was awarded a Centenary Medal by the Governor General of Australia for his contribution to both Classical and Asian Studies In 2003. He has been co-director of the UNESCO-sponsored Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum project since 1996 – a project also sponsored by the British Academy and the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He is also co-ordinator of the ‘China and the Ancient Mediterranean World’ Project of the International Union of Academies. In 2012 he was awarded a DORA (Discovery Outstanding Research Award – i.e. a research professorship) by the Australian Research Council enabling him to concentrate on research (i.e. without any teaching) on religious texts from Central Asia for three years (2013-2015). He has published monographs and peer-reviewed articles on the history of Manichaeism in both Europe and China, on Nestorian Christianity in South China during Mongol occupation, on the reign of the Emperor Julian the Apostate, on the defense of the Roman Near East and on Byzantine Greek and Medieval Latin legends on the Emperor Constantine. In his spare time he is trying to complete a monograph on the Classical and Byzantine Thracian Chersonese – more popularly known as the Gallipoli peninsula.