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Staff

Head of Department

Professor Hugh Kennedy

Undergraduate Admissions Tutor (Arabic)

Mr Mohamed Said 

Undergraduate Admissions Tutor (non-Arabic)

Dr Daniel Schwemer 

Undergraduate Tutors (Arabic)

Mr Mohamed I Said (Year 1)
Dr Ayman El-Desouky (Year 4)

Undergraduate Tutor (Non-Arabic)

Dr Nima Mina

Research Tutor

Dr George Dedes

Muhammad A S Abdel Haleem
King Fahd Professor of Islamic Studies
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Qur’an, Hadith, Tafsir; Islam in society; classical and modern Arabic literature

Andrew R George
Professor of Babylonian
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Cuneiform and Ancient Mesopotamian studies


Sabry Hafez
Research Professor of Modern Arabic
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Modern Arabic literature, drama and film studies; comparative literature.

B George Hewitt
Professor of Caucasian Languages
George Hewitt

Caucasian languages (especially South and North-West Caucasian) and linguistics; language work


Bruce Ingham
Bruce Ingham

General descriptive linguistics, Arabic, Persian, North American Indian languages, dialects and oral literature of the Arabian Peninsula - in particular the dialects of the Arabian bedouin, covering the dialects of the Al Dhafir, Mutair, Al Murrah and Rwalah tribes; Lakota (Siouan), Cree (Algonquian)

Hugh N Kennedy
Professor of Arabic
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Medieval history of Arabic-speaking lands.


Tudor Parfitt
Professor of Modern Jewish Studies
Tudor Parfitt

History of the Jews in Africa and Asia; Judaizing movements; Modern Hebrew language and literature

Nicholas Sims-Williams
Professorial Research Associate
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Old and Middle Iranian languages; Indo-European comparative philology; history of Central Asia; identification and reading of inscriptions in Iranian languages; history of peoples, languages and religions along the Silk Road.


Colin Shindler
Professor of Israeli Studies
Colin Shindler

History and politics of Israel; Zionism

Wen-Chin Ouyang
Reader in Arabic Literature
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Classical and modern Arabic literature and culture, with emphasis on narrative and storytelling, comparative narratology and critical theory, and gendered thinking and discourse.


Bengisu Rona
Senior Lecturer in Turkish Studies
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Gender and social development in Turkey; Turkish media; literary trends in 19th and 20th century; linguistic change in Turkey

Stefan Sperl
Senior Lecturer in Arabic
Head of Department
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Classical Arabic literature; medieval Arabic popular literature; court poetry and oral literature; refugee studies and refugee-related issues


Katherine P Zebiri
Senior Lecturer in Arabic
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Arabic language and literature, modern Islamic studies

Shirin Akiner
Research Associate
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Politics in Central Asia; gender issues in Central Asia; Islam in Central Asia; Islam, ethnicity, nation building, political change and security in Central Asia.


George Dedes
Lecturer in Turkish
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Early Anatolian Turkish; Ottoman language and literature; Ottoman history; Turkish-Greek relations; modern Turkish culture

Ayman El-Desouky
Lecturer in Arabic and Comparative Literature
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Comparative Literature, 19th and 20th Century Arabic Literature, hermeneutics, modern philosophy and theory.


Narguess Farzad
Senior Fellow in Persian
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Persian language and literature. Organiser of SOAS-Cambridge Undergraduate workshops

Karima Laachir
Lecturer in Literary and Cultural Studies
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Literary and cultural studies: postcolonial studies, diaspora studies and comparative literature


Nima Mina
Senior Lecturer in Persian and Iranian Studies
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Classical and Modern Persian literature, Orientalism in 18th-20th century Europe, Middle Eastern minority writers in Europe, Diaspora studies, music performance, translation studies

Daniel Schwemer
Reader in Ancient Near Eastern Studies
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Ancient Near Eastern studies, especially cuneiform


Mustafa Shah
Lecturer in Islamic Studies
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The early Arabic linguistic tradition; classical Islamic theology and jurisprudence

Ayman Shihadeh
Lecturer in Islamic Studies
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Mohamed I Said
Senior Lector in Arabic
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Arabic language teaching

Muaadh Salih
Senior Fellow in Arabic
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Mark Weeden
British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow
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Tamar Drukker
Lector in Hebrew
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Modern Hebrew; medieval literature


Nada Elzeer
Senior Lector in Arabic
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Arabic language and translation

Sajida Fawzi
Teacher of Arabic
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Arabic language teaching; Jewish/Muslim relations in the Middle Ages, Sufism, Judaeo-Arabic


Jareer Abu Haidar
Visiting Reader
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Abdul Hakim Ibrahim Al-Matroudi
Senior Visting Lecturer in Arabic
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Igor Dorfmann-Lazarev
Senior Teaching Fellow in Armenian History and Culture
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Received PhD from the EPHE (Sorbonne) in 2002. Before coming to SOAS, taught Biblical languages and the History of Oriental Christianities in the Universities of Rome, Montpellier and Durham. The monograph Arméniens et Byzantins à l’époque de Photius (Peeters 2004) has been awarded the Charles et Marguerite Diehl Prize by the French Academy. Contributed to the Cambridge History of Christianity and other collective volumes and leading international journals in Armenian and orientalist studies.

Krikor Moskofian
Senior Teaching Fellow in West Armenian Language and Literature
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West Armenian language and literature


Johnny Cheung
Research Assistant (funded by the AHRC)
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Bactrian palaeography project (funded by the British Academy)

Farouk N H Al-Rawi
Professorial Research Associate
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Lewis H Glinert
Professorial Research Associate
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Samuel Lieu
Professorial Research Associate
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Harry Norris
Professorial Research Associate
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Zeev Rubin
Professorial Research Associate
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Lamia Al-Gailani
Research Associate
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Edith Bruder
Research Associate
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Dalia Manor
Research Associate
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Marie-Christine Ludwig
Research Associate
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Ahmed Moustafa
Research Associate
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Christina Phillips
British Academy Post-Doctoral Research Fellow
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Modern Arabic literature, Comparative Literature, Gender and Postcolonial Studies


Cornelia Wunsch
Research Associate
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Assyriology