International Association for Coptic Studies

The International Association for Coptic Studies (IACS) is the learned society for Coptic studies. Its statutes describe a non-profit organisation whose purpose is to encourage and contribute to the progress of all aspects of Coptic studies, to promote international cooperation, to disseminate information about research and to organise periodic congresses. It was founded in Cairo in December 1976 and publishes the Journal of Coptic Studies.

Founding

The association was founded during the First International Congress of Coptology in Cairo in December 1976, at the end of the UNESCO project to publish a facsimile edition of the Nag Hammadi codices. The association's own history dates the congress 11 to 17 December and names the Egyptian Antiquities Organization as its sponsor; Martin Krause's entry in The Coptic Encyclopedia (1991) gives 8 to 18 December and names UNESCO as a co-sponsor. Krause records that at the close of that congress the participants adopted statutes and elected a board, and agreed to publish a newsletter. The statutes are dated 15 December 1976 and were last revised on 30 July 2016.

The first board, for 1976 to 1980, had Martin Krause as president, Bentley Layton as president-elect and Tito Orlandi as editor-treasurer. Mirrit Boutros Ghali, who led the Société d'Archéologie Copte, was among the first honorary presidents.

Congresses

The statutes provide for a congress normally at four-year intervals, with a business meeting that confirms members, elects officers and sets dues. The association lists thirteen congresses and names Oslo as the venue of the fourteenth, in 2030.

International Congresses of Coptic Studies, as the IACS lists them

Congress	Place	Dates
1st	Cairo	11 to 17 December 1976
2nd	Rome	22 to 26 September 1980
3rd	Warsaw	20 to 25 August 1984
4th	Louvain-la-Neuve	5 to 10 September 1988
5th	Washington, DC	12 to 15 August 1992
6th	Münster	20 to 26 July 1996
7th	Leiden	27 August to 2 September 2000
8th	Paris	28 June to 3 July 2004
9th	Cairo	14 to 20 September 2008
10th	Rome	17 to 22 September 2012
11th	Claremont, California	25 to 30 July 2016
12th	Brussels	11 to 16 July 2022
13th	Göttingen	27 July to 1 August 2026

The association reported that the 13th congress was hosted jointly by the Georg-August-Universität and the Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and that nearly 300 scholars from more than 30 countries attended its opening on 27 July 2026.

Officers

The statutes set seven officers, each serving a four-year term: president, president-elect, secretary, congress secretary, webmaster, director of the Cairo Center and editor of the journal. A board of eleven, the seven officers and four members at large, governs between congresses.

For 2026 to 2030 the association lists Tonio Sebastian Richter as president, Sofía Torallas Tovar as president-elect, Victor Ghica as secretary, Hugo Lundhaug as congress secretary, Mennat-Allah El Dorry as director of the Cairo Center, Matthias Müller as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Coptic Studies and Alin Suciu as webmaster. The members at large are Mary K. Farag, Maher Eissa, Florence Calament and Frank Feder. Tito Orlandi (since 2022) and Stephen Emmel (since 2026) are honorary presidents.

The presidents before Richter, each for one term, were Martin Krause, Bentley Layton, Rodolphe Kasser, Peter Nagel, Søren Giversen, Stephen Emmel, Tito Orlandi, Theofried Baumeister, Anne Boud'hors, Jacques van der Vliet, David Brakke and Paola Buzi.

Publications

The Journal of Coptic Studies is published by Peeters in Leuven (ISSN 1016-5584); its volumes run from the first, in 1990, to volume 27 in 2026. The association's history page records that it founded the journal in 1990, with G. M. Browne and Stephen Emmel as its first editors; its statutes give 1988 as the founding year. The journal accepts articles on Coptic language, literature, history, art, archaeology and related subjects before the modern period. It is peer-reviewed and is indexed in Scopus and ERIH PLUS, among others.

The association keeps an archive of its newsletter on its website. In October 2026 it released the second volume of the proceedings of the Brussels congress, Studies in Coptic Linguistics in Memory of Wolf-Peter Funk, as open access.