Founder. Board Member
I work on Islamic intellectual history from the late-medieval to early-modern period, known as the post-classical period. I concentrate on topics from philosophy, but frequently involve sources from theology, mysticism, and the sciences as well. Popular knowledge has it that this period is devoid of interesting intellectual work in the Islamic world; that Islam fell into a Dark Age from which it never recovered. My work helps to dispel this myth by giving counter examples and establishing a general narrative of intellectual activity in this post-classical period. My preferred procedure is to pick an earlier thinker such as the theologian al-Ghazali (d. 1111), the philosopher al-Suhrawardi (d. 1191), or the mystic Ibn Arabi (d. 1240) and unearth the influence such a thinker had on the discourse up until today.
To do this work, I use computer-supported solutions, which makes my work part of the emerging ‘Digital Humanities.’ I am one of the first to introduce Islamic Studies to this, and as such my work on this is a combination of thinking of foundational concepts and developing of practical proof of concepts.
The Digital Orientalist 