Michal Biran (PhD 2000, HU) is an Associate Professor at the department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies and at the department of East Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her books include Qaidu and the Rise of the Independent Mongol State in Central Asia (Curzon, 1997), The  Empire of  the Qara Khitai in Eurasian History: Between China and the Islamic World (Cambridge University Press, 2005, 2008) and  Chinggis Khan  (Oxford: OneWorld publications, 2007). She has co-edited Mongols, Turks and Others: Eurasian Nomads and the Sedentary World (with Reuven Amitai, Leiden: Brill, 2005) and Eurasian Nomads As Agents of Cultural Change  (with Reuven Amitai, Forthcoming in Hawaii University Press). She has recently authored the chapter on the Mongols in "The New Cambridge  World History," and  is currently working on several book projects  among them "Mobility, Empire, and Cross Cultural Contacts in Mongol Eurasia"  and "The Cultural History of Ilkhanid Baghdad."