Francesca Stavrakopoulou (born Bromley

Bromley

Bromley is a large suburban town in south east London, England and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Bromley. It was historically a market town, and prior to 1963 was in the county of Kent and formed the administrative centre of the Municipal Borough of Bromley...

, 1975) is an atheist Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

 scholar and senior lecturer in the University of Exeter's

University of Exeter

The University of Exeter is a public university in South West England. It belongs to the 1994 Group, an association of 19 of the United Kingdom's smaller research-intensive universities....

 department of Theology and Religion. The main focus of her research is Israelite and Judahite history and religion. She is noted for her academic and media roles: presenting a three-part television series on the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 The Bible's Buried Secrets (2011; not to be confused with the 2008 NOVA

NOVA (TV series)

Nova is a popular science television series from the U.S. produced by WGBH Boston. It can be seen on the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States, and in more than 100 other countries...

 program of the same name

The Bible's Buried Secrets

"The Bible's Buried Secrets" is the title of a NOVA program that stirred controversy even before its first airing on PBS, on November 18, 2008. According to the program's official website: "The film presents the latest archeological scholarship from the Holy Land to explore the beginnings of modern...

), and for contributions to Channel 4

Channel 4

Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

's series The Bible: A History. She describes herself as 'an atheist with huge respect for religion' and regards her work as 'a branch of history like any other'.

Her DPhil from the University of Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

, which examined the creation of an imagined past within the Hebrew Bible, was subsequently published with the title King Manasseh and Child Sacrifice: Biblical Distortions of Historical Realities. Her second book was Land of our Fathers: The Roles of Ancestor Veneration in Biblical Land Claims. She has also co-edited Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah and Ecological Hermeneutics: Biblical, Historical and Theological Perspectives. She was a junior research fellow at Worcester College, Oxford

Worcester College, Oxford

Worcester College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. The college was founded in the eighteenth century, but its predecessor on the same site had been an institution of learning since the late thirteenth century...

, before moving to Exeter.

Stavrakopoulou is the secretary of the British-based Society for Old Testament Study, and a member of the European Association of Biblical Studies and of the US-based Society of Biblical Literature

Society of Biblical Literature

The Society of Biblical Literature, founded 1880, is a constituent society of the American Council of Learned Societies , with the stated mission to "Foster Biblical Scholarship"...

.