Mary B. Ccunningham is an Honorary Associate Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Nottingham. She works on Byzantine homiletics, with special interest in the interaction between preacher and audience, as well as on the veneration of the Virgin Mary in early Christianity and Byzantium on other Byzantine literary genres including hagiography and hymnography. Her books include Faith in the Byzantine World (2002), Wider Than Heaven: Eighth-Century Homilies on the Mother of God (2008), and Gateway of Life: Orthodox Thinking on the Mother of God (2015).