Shii News – Academic Items
1. Extended DEADLINE 30 May 2025 – Annual Arabic Pasts Workshop
Arabic Pasts is co-convened by Anna Chrysostomides (Queen Mary), Yossi Rapoport (Queen Mary), Hugh Kennedy (SOAS), Lorenz Nigst (AKU-ISMC), and Sarah Bowen Savant (AKU-ISMC).
The event is 9-10 October, 2025 in London.
The annual Arabic Pasts workshop brings together scholars at all career stages to reflect on methodologies, research agendas, and case studies for investigating history writing in Arabic in the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond in any period from the seventh century to the present.
This year the Arabic Pasts workshop welcomes Queen Mary University of London as a partner. We will host the workshop in person at the Aga Khan Centre and welcome proposals that deal with the practical and conceptual challenges of working on history writing in Arabic. We encourage scholars working at all career stages to join us.
By way of example, papers might elucidate the following sorts of questions – or others:
- How do nations today tell their stories with respect to their pasts? In what ways do educational institutions, museums, media organisations and proponents of heritage use history writing to shape loyalties and senses of belonging in society?
- When and how did pre-modern and modern historians writing in Arabic conceptualize the history of Palestine as a distinct geographical and political unit? What are the Arabic historiographical traditions regarding the city of Gaza and its hinterland, and how have they developed in the last two centuries?
- How is the past used in creative arts, re-enactment, games, and augmented reality?
- What do we consider works of fiction and how do they differ in authorial intent from historical chronicles? Does this authorial intent make a difference in how we treat these sources? What can we learn from combinations of fiction and non-fiction sources, if anything?
- What is the relationship between Arabic and other languages and scripts in bi/multi-lingual and bi/multi-alphabetic texts (tarikh, documents, other genres) across time?
- How can marginalised communities and their varieties of Arabic be given due attention?
- How can all genders (including non-binary) be given due attention when our sources are often composed by male political, intellectual and religious elites?
- How can we explore the past algorithmically? Can digital methods enhance our understanding of the past? Can they also limit or even alter it? Which new digital tools are being developed? What seem to be particularly promising approaches? What is lacking?
Prior to the workshop, we will also run a hands-on workshop on digital methods for Arabic texts – no experience necessary. Please get in touch early if you are interested in joining as we will have to cap participation.
Please submit an abstract of 300 words or less in word document by 30 May 2025 to ArabicPastsConf@aku.edu. Also please be in touch if you would like to join the digital methods workshop.
2. Fellowships for Women Researchers (Gotha Research Library)
Germany
Within the framework of the “Thüringer Programm zur Förderung von Nachwuchswissenschaftlerinnen und Nachwuchskünstlerinnen”, the University of Erfurt (Germany) is offering three short-term scholarships for up to five months for female academics who have completed their doctorate to research the holdings of the Gotha Research Library for the year 2025. The scholarship can be taken up on 1 August 2025 at the earliest and ends on 31 December 2025 in any case. Depending on the focus, the scholarship holders are linked to the Gotha Research Centre at the University of Erfurt or to the Centre for Transcultural Studies / Perthes Collection. The application deadline is 15 June 2025.
GOTHA RESEARCH LIBRARY
The Research Library (FBG), located in Gotha’s Friedenstein Castle, holds a remarkable collection on early modern and modern cultural history. After Berlin and Munich and alongside the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, it houses the most significant collection in Germany of historical sources from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. To these were added in 2003 the Perthes Collection Gotha from the holdings of the Justus Perthes Gotha publishing house, established in 1785. It is considered one of the most significant cartographic collections worldwide.
The library keeps and catalogues these sources, which are part of a European cultural heritage. The library collection encompasses c. 700,000 prints, of which about 350,000 are early modern. Additionally, it holds c. 11,500 manuscript volumes containing a considerable collection of manuscripts, autographs, and literary remains pertaining, among other things, to the cultural history of early modern Protestantism, as well as a collection of some 3,500 oriental manuscripts – the third largest of its kind in Germany. Moreover, the library provides a remarkable collection of letters by German emigrants to America.
The Perthes collection with its collection of maps, cartographic library, and the press archives offers a unique collection in situ. The cartographic collection is comprised of c. 185,000 maps from the late eighteenth to the twentieth century, produced by Perthes and other cartographic printers throughout the world. The cartographic-geographic library comprises 120,000 volumes, a genealogical-statistical book collection, as well as a complete exemplar of the Almanach de Gotha, produced by the Perthes publishing house. The press’ archive, with 800 linear metres of archival material, includes, inter alia, the editorial archive of Petermann’s Geographische Mitteilungen, a collection of the press’ specimen copies, as well as 1,650 copper plates. The FBG is headed by Dr Kathrin Paasch.
GOTHA RESEARCH CENTRE
The Gotha Research Centre (FZG), founded in 2004, is a central academic body of the University of Erfurt. Its main objective is to conduct and facilitate international interdisciplinary research projects in the field of cultural and intellectual history of the modern period, in close cooperation with the institutions and their holdings at Friedenstein Castle. Further information on current projects and thematic focuses can be found here. In addition, the centre offers a rich programme of (guest)lectures, conferences, and colloquia. Our goal is to serve as a platform where scholars from all over the world can conduct research and discuss their ideas and work in progress in a challenging and congenial atmosphere. The Gotha Research Centre is headed by Prof. Martin Mulsow.
CENTRE FOR TRANSCULTURAL STUDIES / PERTHES COLLECTION
The Centre for Transcultural Studies / Perthes Collection (FKTS/SP), newly established at the beginning of 2021, is also a central academic body of the University of Erfurt. It sees itself as a platform for interdisciplinary research on the historical becoming of today’s global world. Its research is oriented towards the Gotha collection contexts since the end of the 18th century and focuses in particular on the Perthes Collection. The centre pursues independent as well as cooperative research projects, among others on the cartography of the oceans and the maps of Africa and Asia (further information here). It works closely with national and international scholars and strives for close cooperation with academics from the global south. The FKTS/SP is headed by Prof. Iris Schröder.
FUNDING PROFILE AND REQUIREMENTS
The programme aims at promoting academic research through the use of the resources of the Research Library Gotha and of the associated historic collection of the Justus Perthes Gotha Publishing House. Its academic orientation intends to carry on the universal spirit of the library itself and its diverse resources. In this sense, the programme has an open thematic and disciplinary character. The holdings of the Thuringian State Archive of Gotha, which is located in the Perthes-Forum, as well as collections held by the museums of the Schloss Friedenstein Foundation can be included in the research project, too.
The short-term is aimed at excellent young women academics with a doctorate who wish to start a new research project or continue or complete a work already begun and use the above-mentioned holdings for this purpose. At the time of the start of the fellowship, the applicant must provide evidence of having successfully passed the examinations within the framework of the doctoral procedure.
The monthly funding amounts to 2,000 euros. In addition, a family allowance of 300 euros is granted for one child and 150 euros for each additional child. The scholarship can be started from 1 August 2025 at the earliest. The scholarship must be completed by 31 December 2025. Regular presence in Gotha and active networking with local academics are required.
Please find the application details here: https://www.uni-erfurt.de/forschungszentrum-gotha/stipendien/fo
3. The University of Oxford is looking for a postdoctoral research associate to support a new collaborative project titled, ‘Knotted Histories: Early Modern Global Carpets, Global Exchange and the Public Country House.’
Led by Prof. Nandini Das (Oxford), Dr Francesca Leoni (Ashmolean Museum), Dr Christo Kefalas & Emma Slocombe (National Trust), ‘Knotted Histories’ aims to illuminate the potential of global carpet collections for rethinking scholarship and heritage sector practice relating to wider histories of production and consumerism, sociability and embodiment, and global networks of exchange.
For more details about the project, the post’s requirements and how to apply, please see the following link:
Closing date: 12 noon, 6 June, 2025
4. 2025 BRISMES Annual Conference
Newcastle University • 1-3 July 2025
We are pleased to announce that registration for non-speaking delegates for the 2025 BRISMES conference “Destruction, Loss, and Recovery in the Middle East” is now open until 12 June 2025.
Please see our provisional conference programme, which includes over 80 panels and plenaries covering diverse topics that fall within and beyond the conference’s main theme.
We look forward to our keynote speech by Dr Rana Barakat (Birzeit University), titled “Palestine Teaches: Why History Matters”. We are also very pleased to host the roundtable plenary “Ruins and Rebuilding: Academic and Activist Solidarities Across Borders”.
Registration for non-presenting delegates open:
https://register.oxfordabstracts.com/event/73980?preview=false
5. ONLINE Lecture “Crafting Communities into Contact: Contextualizing Glyptic Interconnections in the Levant, Egypt, and Aegean (ca. 2500-1500 BCE)” by Nadia Ben-Marzouk, W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, 21 May 2025, 16:00 CET
Stamp and cylinder seal amulets have long factored into debates on the nature of east Mediterranean inter-connectivity during the late third to early second millennium BCE. This lecture presents new research identifying and contextualizing the widespread appearance of a glyptic koine, arguing for sustained interaction and a new focus on the role of skilled labor in the making of an east Mediterranean exchange system.
Information and registration: https://tinyurl.com/bdhj24sv
6. ONLINE Book Discussion “Edward Said: The Politics of an Oppositional Intellectual” with Author Nubar Hovsepian, American University in Cairo Press, 21 May 2025, 18:00 CET
The political, cultural, and personal dimensions of Edward Said’s thought will be discussed – from his groundbreaking work Orientalism to his enduring advocacy for Palestinian rights and his vision for justice and humanism in global affairs. The conversation will also reflect on Said’s relevance in today’s world and Hovsepian’s unique insights as both a scholar and someone who knew Said personally.
Information and registration: https://tinyurl.com/3jxabb67
7. Conference “The Kurdish Issue and the Developments in the Middle East”, Centre for Mediterranean, Middle East and Islamic Studies (CEMMIS), University of the Peloponnese, Institute of Inter-national Relations (IDIS), Athens, 24 May 2025, 8:30 – 18:30 CET
Information and program: https://cemmis.edu.gr/images/events/cemmis_agenda_kurdish.pdf
8. ONLINE Séminaire “Paris, Venise, Rome et Constantinople en conflit. Qui protège les églises catholiques de Smyrne au XVIIe siècle ?” avec Alper Metin (Università di Bologna), École Francaise de Rome, 26 mai 2025, 17h30 – 19h00 CET
Ce séminaire éclaire un aspect méconnu de “l’Histoire de la Latinité” en Méditerranée orientale : la rivalité franco-italienne autour de la protection des églises et de l’administration des paroisses catholiques dans les territoires ottomans. L’étude des mutations survenues durant les guerres vénéto-ottomanes (1645-1718), qui renforcèrent l’influence française au détriment de la Sérénissime, révèle la complexité des enjeux politiques, religieux, architecturaux et urbains dans l’Égée.
Information et inscription : https://tinyurl.com/3ex5e27c
9. International Conference “Crises and Preaching in the Middle East: Lexis, Framing, Timings: 19th ‒ 21st Centuries in the Middle East”, PredicMO, Institut Français in Amman, 26-27 May 2025
By focusing on how crisis and preaching have intersected across religious traditions since the late 19th century, this international conference seeks to shed light on the transformation of religious discourse in the contemporary Middle East.
Information and registration: https://iismm.hypotheses.org/122793
10. International Workshop on “Education, Power and Possibility: Rethinking “Quality Education” in the Middle East”, Unit for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Societies (MOMuG), University of Bern, January 2026
This workshop seeks to critically interrogate the notion of “quality education” as international policy directive and universal ideal by examining how the concept of quality education is constructed, negotiated and/or challenged in the Middle East. Our focus will be on how local actors – including educators, students, civil society organizations, policymakers and communities – define and deliberate on what constitutes quality education. Etc.
Deadline for abstracts: 31 May 2025. Information: https://tinyurl.com/2s6vh9f5
11. Postdoctoral Position (2 years) in the project “Mapping Occult Sciences Across Islamicate Cultures” Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
Qualification: PhD in Early Modern Ottoman or Islamic Studies, or related fields; – an excellent command of Classical Arabic and Ottoman Turkish (the knowledge of additional languages such as Persian is considered an advantage); – an outstanding publication record relative to career stage; – academic writing and presentation skills in English.
Deadline for applications: 14 June 2025. Information: Contact fatmasinem.eryilmaz@uab.cat1
12. “German-Yemeni Autumn School” for German Master Students Studying in Germany, Amman, Jordan, 29 September – 3 October 2025
The Autum School is organized by the ” Woman Research & Training Center” at Aden University and the “Center for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient (CARPO)” in Bonn. We are looking for students with good knowledge of English, who either a) have experience with civil society organizations or demonstrated interest in the topic of social cohesion, science communication and/or Yemen through courses taken and internships done.
Deadline for applications: 8 June 2025.
Information: https://carpo-bonn.org/weitere-inhalte/german-yemeni-autumn-school-in-amman
13. Call for papers : The pilgrimage to Mecca as a social experience
Three dimensions will be emphasized here: The hajj as religious experience and dramaturgy of salvation. – The hajj as an issue of governance and a vector of collective identity. – The hajj as a means of experiencing space.
Deadline for abstracts: 31 October 2025. Information: https://journals.openedition.org/arabianhumanities/15236
14. International Conference “Crises and Preaching in the Middle East: Lexis, Framing, Timings: 19th ‒ 21st Centuries in the Middle East”, PredicMO, Institut Français in Amman, 26-27 May 2025
By focusing on how crisis and preaching have intersected across religious traditions since the late 19th century, this international conference seeks to shed light on the transformation of religious discourse in the contemporary Middle East.
Information and registration: https://iismm.hypotheses.org/122793
Posted in: Academic items
- May 17, 2025
- 0 Comment
