Ghent University

Faculty Member, Near Eastern Studies

About

Jo Van Steenbergen was a student of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the KULeuven (Belgium) where he obtained his PhD in 2003. He previously was a research assistant of the Research Foundation-Flanders (Belgium) and a research fellow of the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (Egypt). In 2004 he was appointed lecturer at the University of St Andrews (UK), in the School of History's departments of Mediaeval History and Middle Eastern Studies. Since early 2007, he is at Ghent University (Belgium), first as a lecturer (assistant professor) of Arabic and Islamic Studies, and since 2009 as a research senior lecturer (associate professor). He is a specialist of pre-modern Islamic history and participates in the teaching of Islamic history and religion.

Jo Van Steenbergen's research concerns the history of the Islamic middle period (ca. 1000-1500), mainly focusing on (semi)Turkic dynasties in Syria and Egypt (Seljuqs, Zengids, Ayyubids, Mamluks). Within this larger remit, he pays particular attention to the following broad themes:
-Islamic political culture
-prospopography, social structures, and authority
-historiography and epigraphy
-islam and religious experience, diversity and syncretism
-art, architecture and urbanisation

Jo Van Steenbergen is happy to engage with any projects, including PhD projects, that fall within these broadly defined areas of academic research (in Dutch, French or English). More information on current research projects may be found on the department's homepage. In 2009, Jo Van Steenbergen was awarded a prestigious European Research Council Starting Grant, for a research project (2009-14) on the political history of 15th-century Egypt and Syria.

As of January 2011, he is general editor for the international peer-reviewed journal al-Masāq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean (Routledge, Taylor&Francis)

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