Notes on Contributors
Beth Baron is Distinguished Professor of History at the City College and Graduate Center of the City University of New York and Director of the Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center at the CUNY Graduate Center. From 2009 to 2014, she edited the International Journal of Middle East Studies, and from 2015 to 2017, served as president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America. Her most recent book, The Orphan Scandal: Christian Missionaries and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, appeared with Stanford University Press in 2014. Earlier works include Egypt as a Woman: Nationalism, Gender, and Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005) and The Women’s Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994). She co-edited Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991) with Nikki Keddie and Iran and Beyond: Essays in Middle Eastern History in Honor of Nikki R. Keddie (Costa Mesa: Mazda, 2000) with Rudi Matthee. She is currently working on a project on the history of medicine, disease, and reproductive health in colonial Egypt.
Philippe Bourmaud is Associate Professor in Modern and Contemporary History at the Université Jean Moulin-Lyon 3. His research focuses on the history of health professions in the late Ottoman and Mandatory Middle East, with a focus on Palestine; the history of expertise in the Middle Eastern mandates; and the history of alcohol in the modern Middle East. His publications include: “La invención de los indicadores internacionales: Salud, problemas sociales y cuantificación en el Cerccano Oriente bajo mandato (1919–1939),” in Mundos arabes en movimiento: Historia del presente, coll. ivestigacion e ideas, eds. Camila Pastor, Gilberto Conde, and Marta Tawil, 291–315 (Mexico: CIDE, 2016); “Turf Wars at the League of Nations: International Anti-Cannabis Policies and Oversight in Syria and Lebanon, 1919–1939,” in The League of Nations’ Work on Social Issues: Visions, Endeavours and Experiments, eds. Magaly Rodrigues Garcia, Davide Rodogno, and Liat Kozma, 75–87 (Geneva: United Nations, 2016); “Pipe-line, colonialisme et ligne claire: Tintin et la question des mandats du Proche-Orient,” in “La BD francophone et le tournant postcolonial,” ed. Philippe Delisle, special issue, Outre-mers: Revue d’ histoire 392–393, no. 2 (2016): 39–68; With Karène Sanchez Summerer, eds., “Missions, Powers and Arabization,” special issue, Social Sciences and Missions 32, nos. 3–4 (2019).
Seija Jalagin holds a PhD from the University of Oulu, Finland (2007) and has been a Docent at the University of Turku, Finland, since 2013. Jalagin works as a Senior Lecturer of History and Japanese Studies at the University of Oulu. She has published extensively on gender and cultural interaction in Christian mission, stereotypes and mental images. Currently, she researches transnational refugee history and is the leader of research project “Recognition and belonging: forced migrations, troubled histories and memory cultures”, funded by the Finnish Research Council (2017–2021).
Nazan Maksudyan is a Research Associate at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (Berlin). She was a EUME Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in 2009–2010 and an Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung Postdoctoral Fellow at the ZMO in 2010–2011. She worked as an Associate Professor of History at Istanbul Kemerburgaz University (2013–2016). Her research mainly focuses on the history of children and youth in the Ottoman Empire during the 19th and 20th centuries, with special interest in gender, sexuality, education, humanitarianism, and non-Muslims. Her Orphans and Destitute Children in the Late Ottoman Empire (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2014) treats those who are farthest removed from power as the lead actors in history. She edited Women and the City, Women in the City (New York: Berghahn, 2014). On the history of children, she published “Orphans, Cities, and the State: Vocational Orphanages (Islahhanes) and ‘Reform’ in the Late Ottoman Urban Space,” IJMES 43 (2011): 493–511, and “Foster-Daughter or Servant, Charity or Abuse: Beslemes in the Late Ottoman Empire,” Journal of Historical Sociology 21 (2008): 488–512. Currently, she works on the lives of children in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War on which she has published “Agents or Pawns? Nationalism and Ottoman Children during the Great War,” Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association (JOTSA) 3 (2016): 147–172.
Michael Marten Having previously taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies, the University of Pavia, and the University of Stirling, Michael Marten has published widely on Scottish missionary efforts in the Middle East. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2015 in recognition of his contribution to this field.
Heleen Murre-van den Berg (PhD Leiden, 1995) is director of the Institute of Eastern Christian Studies and Professor of Eastern Christian Studies at Radboud University. She is the PI of the ERC Advanced Project “Rewriting Global Orthodoxy: Oriental Christianity in Europe between 1970 and 2020” (2019–2024). Earlier, she held the chair of professor of World Christianity, especially in the Middle East, at Leiden University, where she also served as vice-dean of the Faculty of Humanities. She published extensively on Christianity in the Middle East, especially on the Syriac/Assyrian traditions. Recent publications include (with S.R. Goldstein-Sabbah, eds.) Modernity, Minority, and the Public Sphere: Jews and Christians in the Middle East (Leiden: Brill, 2016) and Scribes and Scriptures: The Church of the East in the Eastern Ottoman Provinces (1500–1850) (Louvain: Peeters, 2015). In 2017, she was elected a member of the KNAW (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen) and she received the Hans Sigrist Prize of the University of Bern.
Inger Marie Okkenhaug (PhD University of Bergen, 1999) is a Professor of History at Volda University College, Norway. From 2000 until 2009 Okkenhaug was a researcher at the University of Bergen. She has published a number of chapters and articles on mission, gender, relief and welfare in the Middle East. Among her most recent publications is “Religion, Relief, and Humanitarian Work among Armenian Women Refugees in Mandatory Syria, 1927–1934,” Scandinavian Journal of History 40, no. 3 (2015): 432–454; “Scandinavian Missionaries in Palestine: The Swedish Jerusalem Society, Medical Mission and Education in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, 1900–1948,” in Tracing the Jerusalem Code: Christian Cultures in Scandinavia vol. 3., ed. Ragnhild J. Zorgati (De Gruyter, 2020) and “Orphans, Refugees and Relief in the Armenian Republic, 1922–1925,” in Aid to Armenia, eds. Joanne Laycock and Francesca Piana, (Manchester University Press, 2020). Okkenhaug’s latest book, “En norsk filantrop”: Bodil Biørn og armenerne, 1905–1934 (2016) deals with Norwegian mission and humanitarian work among the Armenians in the years from 1905 to 1940.
Idir Ouahes obtained his PhD degree in History from the University of Exeter in 2016. Previously, he studied at Exeter (MRes Middle East Studies) and at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (BA History). Idir published his thesis in 2018 via I.B. Tauris as Syria and Lebanon at the Outset of the French Mandate: Workings of Cultural Imperialism. He has published several peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries. Among these are: “Agricultural Experimentation in French Mandate Syria,” in Ecological Networks in Colonial Contexts, c. 1850–1920, eds. Ulrike Kirchberger and Brett Bennett (Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2019); “Situating the Syrian State: Education & Citizenship 1914–2014,” in Citizenship, Identity & Nation-States in the 21st Century, eds. Nicole Stokes DuPass and Ramona Fruja, 195–220 (New York: Palgrave, 2016); “Catholic Missionary Education in early French Mandate Syria & Lebanon,” Social Sciences and Missions 30, nos. 3–4 (2017): 225–253; “Une ceinture d’ espace étatique: Le contrôle des bédouins au début du Mandat Francais en Syrie,” L’ Éspace Politique 28 (2015).
Maria Chiara Rioli is a Marie Curie post-doctoral fellow at Fordham University and Ca’ Foscari Venice University. She was a research associate at the University of Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée and scientific secretary at “Open Jerusalem”, an ERC-funded project. Among her publications are “The ‘New Nazis’ or the ‘People of our God’? Jews and Zionism in the Latin Church of Jerusalem, 1948–1962,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History (2017): 81–107; and Ritornare a Israele: Giorgio La Pira, gli ebrei, la Terra Santa (ed., Pisa: Edizione della Normale, 2015).
Karène Sanchez Summerer is Associate Professor at Leiden University. She obtained her PhDs from Leiden University and EPHE (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, Sorbonne). Her research considers the European linguistic and cultural policies and the Arab communities (1860–1948) in Palestine. She is the PI of the research project “CrossRoads—A connected history between Europeans’ cultural diplomacy and Arab Christians in Mandate Palestine” (2018–2022, project funded by the Dutch Research Council NWO). She is the co-editor of the series Languages and Culture in History with Em. Prof. W. Frijhoff, Amsterdam University Press. From 2015 until 2019, she was the PI of the international project NWO/IEG Mainz/IISMM Paris research project “Engaging Europe in the Middle East: European missionaries and humanitarianism in the Middle East (1850–1970).” Since 2017, she has been one of the coordinators of the MisSMO research program about Christian missions in the Middle East since the late 19th century,
Bertrand Taithe is Professor of History at the University of Manchester and executive director of the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute. He researches the history of humanitarian aid and of missionary activities in the field of relief work. He is currently working on a monograph entitled: The Humanitarians a history. His most recent works include: “The Cradle of the New Humanitarian System? International Work and European Volunteers at the Cambodian Border Camps, 1979–1993,” Contemporary European History 25, no. 2 (2016): 335–358; “The Charity-Mongers of Modern Babylon: Bureaucracy, Scandal, and the Transformation of the Philanthropic Marketplace, c. 1870–1912,” Journal of British Studies 54, no. 1 (2015): 118–137, with Sarah Roddy and Julie-Marie Strange; and a monograph with Bloomsbury, Missionary Developmentalism in Secular and Colonial Context: Humanitarian Arab Villages of Algeria and the Legacy of Lavigerie.
Chantal Verdeil graduated from the Institut d’ Etudes Politiques (Paris). She also graduated in Arabic and History. She is currently Professor at INALCO. She published La mission jésuite du Mont-Liban et de Syrie (1830–1864) (Paris: Les Indes savantes, 2011) and, with Anne-Laure Dupont and Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, Le Moyen-Orient par les textes (Paris: A. Colin, 2011) and Histoire du Moyen-Orient XIXe–XXIe siècle (Paris: A. Colin, 2016). She just finished a book on the Saint-Joseph University (Beirut, 1875–1923).