Our Team
Professor Charles Burnett
United Kingdom - The Warburg Institute, London
Professor Charles Burnett is the leader of the Encounters with the Orient (EOS) research project. He is responsible for the part of EOS dedicated to the Learning and Teaching of Arabic in early modern Europe and he is the co-editor of the paper collection we are preparing on this topic.
Professor Burnett's work has centred on the transmission of Arabic science and philosophy to Western Europe, which he has documented by editing and translating several texts that were translated from Arabic into Latin, and by describing the historical and cultural context of the translations.
He is based at the Warburg Institute, where he is the Professor of the History of Islamic Influences in Europe. He is also the co-director of the Warburg's Centre for the History of Arabic Studies in Europe.
Dr Nuria Martínez de Castilla Muñoz
Madrid - Complutense University, United Kingdom - The Warburg Institute, London
Dr Nuria Martínez de Castilla Muñoz is the Post-Doctoral Fellow for the EOS research project, based at the Warburg Institute. She is responsible for the database of Arabic teachers in early modern Europe.
Dr Martinez is a Lecturer in the Arabic and Islamic Department of the Complutense University, Madrid.Her main fields of interest are in Qur’ānic Studies and in Islam in Spain during the XVth-XVIIth centuries. She is a great expert in the codicology of Arabic and Aljamiado manuscripts.
Dr Jan Loop
United Kingdom - The University of Kent at Canterbury
Dr Jan Loop is responsible for the development and the managment of EOS. He is also responsible for the setting-up and the maintenance of the website. As a principle investigator he is involved in a number of individual projects, i.e. the Learning and Teaching of Arabic in early modern Europe, the conference on Hiob Ludolf and Johann Michael Wansleben and the celebration of the life and work of Antoine Galland.
Dr Loop is Senior Lecturer in early modern history at the University of Kent at Canterbury and the academic manager of the Centre for the History of Arabic Studies in Europe. His teaching and research interests are in the intellectual, religious and cultural history of Europe and the Near East, with a special focus on Western knowledge of the Arab, Ottoman and Persian world between 1450 – 1800.
Professor Gerard Wiegers
The Netherlands - The University of Amsterdam
Professor Gerard Wiegers has organised the workshop on the Christian Turks - Religious and Cultural Encounters in the Ottoman-Habsburg Contact Zone at the Central European University, Budapest. As a Principle Investigator he is also responsible for the individual project The Presence of Arabic Speaking Christians, Jews and Muslims in Northern Europe. This project assesses the significance of native Arabic speakers for early modern oriental scholarship in Europe.
Professor Wiegers has researched and published widely on the history of native Arabic speakers in Europe. His fields of interest are the dynamics between Judaism, Christianity and Islam in the history of Eurasia and Europ and he is a great expert in the history of Islam on the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa and Europe.
Dr Richard van Leeuwen
The Netherlands - The University of Amsterdam
Dr Richard van Leeuwen is enriching our collaborative research project with a focus on the European discovery of the Arabian Nights and its impact on the field of literature. He is preparing an annotated literary anthology of texts influenced by the Arabian Nights and together with Jan Loop he is organising a public event celebrating the life and work of Antoine Galland in autumn 2015.
Dr van Leeuwen is also invovled as a guest curator of the exhibition 400 Years of Arabic Studies in the Netherlands and as the co-author of its catalog.
Dr van Leeuwen is lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Department of Religious Studies of the University of Amsterdam, where he works on the history of the Middle East, Arabic literature, and Islam in the modern world.
Dr Dorrit van Dalen
The Netherlands - The University of Amsterdam
Dr Dorrit van Dalen organises the exhibition in the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam about the cooperation between native Arabic speakers and scholars in the Dutch Republic. Her own research within the EOS project concerns the extraordinary relationship between the Anabaptist Arabist Jan Theunisz and his Moroccan guest Muhammad ‘Abd al-Aziz.
As an academic Dorrit van Dalen is interested in the contacts between religions and cultures in Africa, especially in the 17th century. As a journalist she publishes on science, education and economy in West-Africa and Egypt.
Professor Martin Mulsow
Germany - University of Erfurt (Forschungszentrum Gotha)
Professor Martin Mulsow is organising the conference on Hiob Ludold and Johann Michael Wansleben, together with Dr Asaph Ben-Tov and Dr Jan Loop at the Research Centre for Cultural and Social Studies, Gotha. The event will take place on 11 - 13 May 2015. Gotha was the place where, in 1652, an significant cultural encounter happened, when the Catholic Ethiopian Priest and Scholar Abba Gorgoryos came to visit Hiob Ludolf. Professor Mulsow is also supervising the research project on Johann Ernst Gerhard and the Harmony of Oriental Languages.
Professor Mulsow is a leading expert in early modern intellectual and religious history and the history of the Radical Reformation, with a particular interest in Anti-Trinitarianism and the parallel perception of Islam and Socinianism in early modern Europe. He is the director of the Forschungszentrum Gotha and Professor for culturs of knowledge early modern Europe.
Dr Asaph Ben-Tov
Germany - University of Erfurt (Forschungszentrum Gotha)
Dr Asaph Ben-Tov is a post-doctoral fellow for the EOS project at the Gotha Research Centre. He is preparing a monograph on the seventeenth-century Jena Orientalist Johann Ernst Gerhard the Elder (1621-1668) based on the extensive Gerhard Nachlass in Gotha. Together with Martin Mulsow and Jan Loop he is also organising a conference on Hiob Ludolf and Johann Michael Wansleben in May 2015.
He is also working on a broader study of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century oriental studies at German universities and Latin schools..
Professor Bernd Roling
Berlin - Freie Universität Berlin
Professor Bernd Roling is working with Professor Outi Merisalo on a research project The Linneans and the Bible: Oriental Philology, Cultural Studies and the Natural Sciences in 18th-century Scandinavia. This project is studying the entanglement of Biblical scholarship, oriental studies and empirical sciences in Sweden, Denmark and Finland and its impact on Biblical studies in the rest of Europe. He is also co-supervising the PhD project of Benjamin Hübbe.
Bernd Roling is Professor for Latin philology with a focus on the medieval and early modern period at the Freie Universität Berlin. He has published extensively on medieval and early modern history of knowledge, science and scholarship, on angelology and demonology and on biblical studies.
Benjamin Hübbe, M.A.
Freie Universität Berlin and University of Jyväskylä
Benjamin Hübbe is a doctroral candidate based in Berlin (Prof. Dr. Bernd Roling) and Jyväskylä (Prof. Dr. Outi Merisalo). He focuses on the entanglement of natural sciences (such as botany and zoology) and the exegesis of Scripture in eighteenth-century Europe. In his thesis he will focus on writings of eighteenth-century European scholars and travelers and their mutual interests in the unfamiliar animals and plants that occur in Scripture.
He is a member of the Colloquium of the Interdisziplinäres Zentrum Mittelalter – Renaissance – Frühe Neuzeit at the Freie Universität Berlin. Together with other colleagues he is currently preparing a collection of papers entitled Wissen und Geltung. Untersuchungen zur kulturellen Dynamik von Wissen in Mittelalter und Neuzeit which will be published in the series of ‘Berliner Mittelalter- und Frühneuzeitforschung’.
He is a member of staff in the classics department of the Freie Universität Berlin and works also on Christian literature of the Late Antiquity.
Professor Outi Merisalo
Finland - University of Jyväskylä
Professor Outi Merisalo is the Principle Investigator in the project The Linneans and the Bible: Oriental Philology, Cultural Studies and the Natural Sciences in 18th-century Scandinavia. Together with Professor Roling she is studying the entanglement of Biblical scholarship, oriental studies and empirical sciences in Sweden, Denmark and Finland and its impact on Biblical studies in the rest of Europe. She is also co-supervising the PhD project of Benjamin Hübbe.
Outi Merisalo is professor of Romance philology at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She is also lecturing in Latin and Romance philology at the University of Helsinki and at the Åbo Akademi.