Middle East

Research into Middle Eastern languages and society is an area of study rooted in four of the major languages spoken in the Middle East: Arabic (the Arab countries and North Africa), Hebrew (Israel), Persian (Iran) and Turkish (Turkey).

Geographically, the area covers a region stretching from Morocco in western North Africa, across the central Middle East, to Iran and Central Asia in the east. Research is conducted into historical and sociological topics, Islam, the media and the Islamic public sphere, urban studies, anthropological subjects, literature and languages.

Current research

Ildiko Beller-Hann: Contemporary Xinjiang: Identity maintenance and history-making among the Uyghurs of Xinjiang.

Isa Blumi: Islam in the Balkans and the conflict in Yemen.

Rasmus Christian Elling: Modern history of Iran; ideology, urbanism, ethnicity & nationalism, political movements; social history and historical sociology.

Alessandro Gori: Literary and cultural history of the Horn of Africa; text production and transmission in the Horn of Africa (in Arabic and local languages); history and culture of Black people in the Islamic world; digital support for textual preservation and circulation.

Joshua Sabih: Arabic and Hebrew identities and literature in Israel; Crime fiction in Hebrew and Arabic.

Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen: Contemporary Islam, more specifically the establishment of a modern Muslim public sphere, and the role of the Muslim ulama in modern Arab states. Lately, this research has primarily focused on the role of Islam in the new pan-Arab television networks.

Claus Valling Pedersen: Literature in 20th- and 21st-century Iran, focusing on early modern literature and the advent of modernity.

Fanar Haddad: Modern Iraq, sectarian relations, identity politics, hybrid governance, Shia Islamism.

Joakim Parslow: Turkish legal and technoscientific thought and its intersections with politics and religion during the 20^th century and beyond.

Liora Sion: Sociology, Israel, Palestine, militarisation, gender and ethnicity, citizenship.

Collective projects

• Viable Futures: Near and Long Term Prospects among Syrian Youth in Jordan
• Danish Mosques – Significance, Use and Influence
• Mediatized diaspora (MEDIASP) - Contentious politics among Arab media users in Europe