Sharon E. J. Gerstel is Professor of Byzantine Art and Archaeology in the Department of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has authored and edited books including Beholding the Sacred Mysteries: Programs of the Byzantine Sanctuary (1999), A Lost Art Rediscovered: The Architectural Ceramics of Byzantium (2001), Thresholds of the Sacred: Architectural, Art Historical, Liturgical, and Theological Perspectives on Religious Screens, East and West (2007), Approaching the Holy Mountain: Art and Liturgy at St Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai (2010), and Viewing the Morea: Land and People in the Late Medieval Peloponnese (2013).