Roman Schärer is a doctoral researcher in the Department of Arabic, Islamic and Middle East Studies at Ghent University (CAIMES) and a member of the ERC project OTTOWAQF. He holds a BA (2015) and MA (2018) in History and Arabic from the University of Zurich (Switzerland). From 2020 to 2023, he worked as a research assistant at Heidelberg University (Germany) in a project dedicated to developing a diachronic and cross-culturally applicable theory of charitable foundations and philanthropy. During his time in Heidelberg, he also studied Turkish and Ottoman.
His doctoral dissertation within the OTTOWAQF project focuses on the Awqāf al-Maghāriba in Jerusalem, examining Islamic endowments (waqf) as mechanisms of group formation, communal preservation, and bottom-up governance.
His research interests include waqf studies, the early modern Ottoman Empire, Bilād al-Shām, Ottoman social history, and the Arabic language.
