Research in Middle Eastern Studies
Our researchers work on the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, covering a wide variety of topics from medieval history to the contemporary culture, politics, and societies of the region.
We work with the Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Persian and Sanskrit languages.
On this page:
Our research on Middle Eastern Language and Linguistics focuses on texts, languages, and linguistics. We specialise in Hebrew, Aramaic, and comparative and historical Semitic linguistics.
Chronologically, our research begins with some of the earliest recoverable language millennia ago, continues through the thousands of years of documented Hebrew and Aramaic, and reaches to contemporary times.
Our research spans the globe, following the Middle Eastern languages as they spread around the Mediterranean and throughout Europe and elsewhere. We also have strengths in language contact in all periods, including how Aramaic and Hebrew impacted each other in Antiquity and how Arabic and Hebrew interacted in the Middle Ages.
Our current project areas include:
- the historical grammar of Hebrew in its various manifestations
- Medieval Hebrew/Arabic linguistic thought
- Judaeo-Arabic
- Neo-Aramaic
- the history of the alphabet
- the cultural history of Hebrew
- Medieval Jewish biblical interpretation in Hebrew and Arabic
- Arabic Bible translation, Rabbinic texts and languages
- Medieval Hebrew manuscripts
Key monographs include:
Research in the department spans a wide range of cultural, literary, and intellectual traditions across the Middle East, from the classical to the contemporary. Areas of expertise include modern and contemporary Arabic, Persian and Hebrew literature, Palestinian cultural production and identity, comparative literature, and eco-critical and environmental humanities approaches to the region.
Work on classical Islam engages deeply with the history of ideas, classical Arabic literary forms, and practices of literary translation. Scholarship in Persian studies focuses on medieval and pre-modern prose and verse narratives, including intersections of science, medicine, politics, and poetry, translations and rewritings, as well as manuscript culture, codicology, calligraphy, and Persianate visual arts.
Research in Hebrew encompasses modern Hebrew literary history from the 19th to the 21st century, with a focus on literary history and themes of nationalism. Together, these areas reflect a rich, interdisciplinary engagement with the literatures, intellectual histories, and cultural expressions of the broader Middle East across time.
Key monographs include:
New Hebrews, Making National Culture in Zion, Cambridge University Press, 2025.
Abū Nuwās, A Demon Spirit: Classical Arabic Hunting Poems, New York University Press, 2024.
Ibn al-Muʿtazz, In Deadly Embrace: Classical Arabic Hunting Poems, New York University Press, 2023.
Israeli Culture between the Two Intifadas, A Brief Romance, University of Texas Press, 2008.
Our historical research covers a wide range of specialisms from Late Antiquity to the modern Middle East. From a chronological perspective, we have particular strengths in the early Islamic era, the Middle Ages, and the Early Modern and Modern periods, and we produce world-leading research on several regions of the Middle East and North Africa.
Our specialisms include the formative period of early Islamic empire in the Middle East with a focus on the Umayyads, medieval North Africa and its material culture, the complex political networks and culture of the Persianate world, and modern Jewish and Israeli history.
All our research is informed by critical approaches to a wide range of Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew primary sources and a wealth of other materials from the region. Many involve collaborations with colleagues in other institutions.
Some of our current project areas are:
- the social and environmental history of Umayyad and Abbasid Egypt; the comparative history of late antique and early medieval empires and their relationships with ecology; and early Arabic genealogical texts
- the evolution of capital cities in the medieval Islamic west and their role in political legitimation; the urban-rural/tribal interplay in the medieval Maghrib; and Islamic material culture
- eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Persian political and economic thought; nineteenth-century translations into Persian; violence and displacement in the eighteenth century; and reassessment of the Qajar era in Iranian history
- modern Israeli culture, cinema, identity formation, and the socio-cultural legacies of Jewish nationalism
Key monographs include:
The Umayyad Empire, Edinburgh University Press, 2024.
Making and Remaking Empire in Qajar Iran, Cambridge University Press, 2024.
The Almoravid and Almohad Empires, Edinburgh University Press, 2016.
The Department’s vibrant research programmes take an interdisciplinary approach to understanding critical transformations affecting the cultures and societies of the Middle East. At one level, we approach the region through a close and critical study of its cultural output, especially how it has reckoned with and represented diverse religious identities and movements and their relationship to the nation.
We are pioneering work in the environmental humanities, analysing the cultural dimensions of environmental crises, especially the situated ways in which Palestinians have addressed environmental concerns.
We use ethnographic approaches to document and analyse critical social dynamics, including: how projects of economic liberalisation have reinforced authoritarian rule; the role of ethnoreligious minorities in shaping urban life in the Middle East and their positioning within the body politic; inter-religious and inter-ethnic relations rooted in the region’s historic cities, and the extent to which these have and have not been recognised as “heritage” worthy of documenting and preserving.
Complementing the study of national cultural contexts and nation-state politics, we also take a transregional approach, with a particular interest in the social dynamics of trade networks, diasporas and other social formations that cut across the boundaries of the nation-state, and that play a critical role in connecting the region to wider geographies within Eurasia and beyond.
Key monographs include:
South Asian Studies research focuses on the Sanskrit language, literature, and intellectual history from the classical to the modern period.
Specific research interests include the history of linguistic and philosophical ideas, with particular attention to the thought of major Sanskrit intellectuals such as Bhartrhari, Shankara, and Appayya Dikshita. An ongoing AHRC project (2025-2030) investigates the production of Sanskrit scholarship and belles-lettres in brahmin settlements in the Kaveri delta during the long eighteenth century.
Recent work has included an AHRC project (2011-2014) focused on the digitisation of Sanskrit manuscript collections held at the University Library, University of Cambridge, and a Leverhulme project (2021-2025) on the social and intellectual history of late Advaita Vedanta.