Associate Professor Malcolm Choat is the Director of the Macquarie University Ancient Cultures Research Centre. He studied Classics and Ancient History at the University of Queensland (1989-1993), before undertaking a PhD at Macquarie (1994-2000). Subsequently, he taught and researched in the School of Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney (2000-2002), before holding a Macquarie University Research Fellowship (2003-2006). 

His fields of research are Coptic and Greek papyrology, and Christianity and monasticism in Late Antique Egypt. Among his current research projects are:

• Knowledge transfer and administrative professionalism in a pre-typographic society: observing the scribe at work in Roman and early Islamic Egypt: ARC-funded collaborative project (with Heike Behlmer, Jennifer Cromwell, Rachel Yuen-Collingridge, Korshi Dosoo, and Matt Underwood), analyzing scribal practice in duplicate papyrus documents from Roman and Late Roman Egypt.
• Communication networks in Upper Egyptian monastic communities in the 6th to 8th centuries CE: ARC-funded collaborative project with Heike Behlmer (University of Göttingen), analysing monasticism in the Theban region, including the publication of Coptic texts from Macquarie excavations on Dra' Abu el-Naga.
• The Archive of Apa Johannes: A re-edition one of the most extensive bilingual (Greek and Coptic) monastic archives on papyrus in from fourth century CE Egypt.
• Papyri from the Rise of Christianity in Egypt: a project to analyse the papyrus texts documenting Christianity in Egypt before the victory of Constantine (324), a collaborative project within the Ancient Cultures Research Centre, to be published by Cambridge University Press.