Jörg Matthias Determann

I am very fortunate to work as a faculty member in the Liberal Arts & Sciences program at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar. I also have the honor of serving as an associate editor of the Review of Middle East Studies. Previously, I had the good fortune of working at Zentrum Moderner Orient, Freie Universität Berlin, SOAS, University of London, and King Saud University. I also had the privilege of being a visiting scholar at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies.

My research interests lie in the history of science and scholarship and in the history of the Muslim world. I am immensely thankful to I.B. Tauris for publishing the following four books of mine: Historiography in Saudi Arabia; Researching Biology and Evolution in the Gulf States; Space Science and the Arab World; and Islam, Science Fiction and Extraterrestrial Life. My current project is entitled Diversifying Modern Astronomy: A History of Science and Activism.

I am deeply grateful to a number of organizations for generously supporting my research. They include Qatar Foundation, Gerda Henkel Stiftung, the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, the Abdullah Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah Foundation, the Society for Arabian Studies, the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, and Stiftung Hans. Finally, I sincerely thank my family, friends, colleagues, students, teachers and mentors for their invaluable guidance, encouragement and assistance.