Martin Laird, O.S.A., is Professor of Early Christian Studies in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University (USA). His publications include Gregory of Nyssa and the Grasp of Faith; Into the Silent Land; A Sunlit Absence; and An Ocean of Light: Contemplation and the Ethics of Silence (forthcoming from Oxford University Press).

Sheelah Treflé Hidden is a Research Associate with the Heythrop Institute Religion and Society at Heythrop College, University of London. Her main interests are Christian and Islamic Mysticism as well as the Mimetic Theory of René Girard. She is editor of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Mystical Perspectives on the Love of God, and contributing editor to The Handbook of Mimetic Theory.