First lecture of the 2015/2016 lecture series
"Engaging with Contemporary Philosophy  in the Middle East and Muslim South Asia: Themes, Approaches, and New Perspectives"

Anke von Kügelgen is professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Bern in Switzerland. Besides a research interest in Islam in Russia and Central Asia, she specifically focuses on the history of philosophy in the modern Middle East. Her dissertation on modern Averroism in the Arab world (“Averroes und die Arabische Moderne: Ansätze zu einer Neubegründung des Rationalismus im Islam”, Leiden: Brill, 1994) was among the first comprehensive studies to draw attention to modern philosophical debates in the Middle East. She has written extensively on Arab philosophers and serves on the editorial board of the journals Asiatische Studien and Worlds of Islam (Berlin: de Gruyter). She is editor of a major book project on philosophy in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Muslim world (as part of Ueberweg: Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, to be published in 2017), editor-in-chief of the book series Philosophie in der nahöstlichen Moderne / Philosophy in the Modern Middle East (Klaus-Schwarz Verlag, Berlin) and director of the research focus Contemporary Philosophy in the Near and Middle East at the University of Bern.