Kamal Abdel-Malek teaches Arabic literature at the American University of Sharjah, UAE. He has published several books on Egyptian popular literature, Arab attitudes to Americans (America in an Arab Mirror, 2000) and Israelis (Arab–Jewish Encounters in Palestinian Literature and Film, forthcoming).
Roger Allen, Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He is the author of The Arabic Novel (1982, 1995) and The Arabic Literary Heritage (1998). He currently serves in an editorial capacity for the journal Middle Eastern Literatures and the Arabic Literature Series of the Dictionary of Literary Biography.
Rosella Dorigo Ceccato, since 1983 Professore Associato of Arabic Language and Literature and recently Vice-Director of the new doctoral programme in Studi Orientali at the University Ca’ Foscari of Venice and a member of the editorial board of the review Quaderni di Studi Arabi. Her scholarly activity has been mainly devoted to the analysis of Arabic literature, with a particular attention to drama. Her research is directed towards Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and the Sultanate of Oman.
Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, University of Helsinki. His main interests lie in medieval Arabic literature, classical Arabic language, and paganism in Iraq. His main works include: Materials for the Study of Rağaz I–Ⅲ (1993–6) and Maqama: A History of a Genre (2002).
Peter Heath, Provost of the American University in Beirut. A specialist in Arabic literature, he is the author of Allegory and Philosophy in Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (1992) and The Thirsty Sword: Sirat ‘Antar and the Arabic Popular Epic (1996).
Th. Emil Homerin, Professor of Religion at the University of Rochester. His publications include From Arab Poet to Muslim Saint (2001), Ibn al-Farid: Sufi Verse, Saintly Life (2001) and The Wine of Love and Life (2005).
῾Abdullah Ibrahim has taught at universities in Iraq, Libya and Qatar. He currently serves as Cultural Adviser to the National Council for Culture in Qatar. Among his recent publications are al-Sardiyyat al-῾arabiyya al-ḥadītha (Modern Arabic Narratology, 2003) and al-Muṭābaqa wa’l-ikhtilāf (Identification and Difference, 2004).
Robert Irwin, a Senior Research Associate of the History Department of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University. His most recent books are Night and Horses and the Desert: An Anthology of Classical Arabian Literature (1999) and The Alhambra (2004).
Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Palestinian poet and critic, Director of East–West Nexus and the Project for the Translation of Arabic (PROTA), both of which have published translations and scholarly works concerning Arab and Middle Eastern culture. She is the author, among many other works, of Trends and Movements in Modern Arabic Poetry (1977).
Remke Kruk, Professor of Arabic Language and Culture at Leiden University, The Netherlands. She has published on a variety of topics. Her main research field, apart from popular sīra, is the transmission and reception of Greek natural philosophy, in particular biology, in the Arabic tradition.
Margaret Larkin, Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of The Theology of Meaning: ῾Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī’s Theory of Discourse (1995), as well as articles on classical and modern Arabic literature in literary and colloquial Arabic.
Muhsin al-Musawi, Professor of Arabic at Columbia University in New York since 2004, after a lengthy teaching career in Iraq, Yemen, Tunis and Sharjah. He is the author of numerous studies of Arabic literature in both Arabic and English, most recently The Postcolonial Arabic Novel (2003).
Dwight F. Reynolds, Professor of Arabic Language and Literature in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He publishes on folklore, literature and music of the Arab Middle East.
D. S. Richards, Emeritus Fellow of St Cross College, University of Oxford, and University Lecturer in Arabic (retired). Joint author of Mamluk Jerusalem (1987), translator of Ibn Shaddad’s Life of Saladin (2001) and The Annals of the Turks (2002), and author of numerous articles on medieval Islamic history.
Philip Sadgrove, Head, Middle Eastern Studies, University of Manchester. He is the author of The Egyptian Theatre in the Nineteenth Century (1996), co-author with Professor Shmuel Moreh of Jewish Contributions to Nineteenth-Century Arabic Theatre (1996) and editor of History of Printing and Publishing in the Languages and Countries of the Middle East (2005).
William Smyth has a BA in Classics from Stanford University and a PhD in Near Eastern Languages from New York University. He has written and lectured on the development of rhetoric and literary theory in the European and Islamic Middle Ages.
Devin Stewart teaches Arabic and Islamic Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He is the author, among other studies, of Twelver Shi‘i Jurisprudence (1991) and Islamic Legal Orthodoxy (1998).
Michael Winter, Professor Emeritus of the History of the Middle East, Tel Aviv University. He is the author of books and articles on the Arab countries under the Mamluks and Ottomans, social aspects of Sufism and education in the Middle East, including (as co-editor with Amalia Levanoni) The Mamluks in Egyptian and Syrian Politics and Society (2004).
Muhammad Lutfi al-Yousfi, Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Tunis, Mannouba. He is the author of a major study of the development of Arabic literary genres and the modes of their analysis, Fitnat al-mutakhayyal (2002).