I am a historian of the Arabic-Islamic world, interested in the intersections of historiography, literature and state formation. I obtained my PhD at Ghent University, and after three years working with the ERC-funded KITAB project at the Aga Khan University in London, I am now back at Ghent as post-doctoral research fellow funded by the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO). In my current project I research historiographical production in Arabic during the third reign of the Syro-Egyptian sultan al-Nasir Muhammad (1310-41). I investigate how different authors with different relationships to the central authorities created a distinctive discourse of history. In a notable shift from the immediately preceding period when historiographical production was dominated by regnal biographies, these 14th century authors all favoured the format of voluminous universal histories. I employ a hybrid material and digital method to study these texts: digital text reuse data to gain insight into the textual networks in which these texts sit, and material data from analysis of preserved (holograph) manuscripts.
Although the interaction of historiography and literary forms is my core interest, I have also published scientific articles on Islamic law, intercommunal polemics and hadith commentaries.
I co-teach the MA course "Islam, Power and History: Text and Context" with Jo Van Steenbergen, and am responsible for three guest lectures of the BA course "Inleiding tot de Geschiedenis van Islamitisch West-Azië".
