Senior Research Scholar

Daniel Boyarin

Hermann P. and Sophia Taubman Professor Emeritus of Talmudic Culture; CMES Senior Research Scholar
Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures
Rhetoric

Daniel Boyarin is Hermann P. and Sophia Taubman Emeritus Professor of Talmudic Culture in the Departments of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures and Rhetoric. He is also an Affiliated Member Department of Women's Studies, a Member of the core faculty in the minor in Gay and Lesbian Studies and of the graduate group in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology, and faculty member for the designated emphasis in Women, Sexuality, Gender Studies, as well as the core faculty of the Center for the Study of Sexual Culture.

Professor Boyarin began his education at Goddard College and...

Simon Brelaud

Avimalek Betyoussef Visiting Assistant Professor of Assyrian Studies; CMES Senior Research Scholars
Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures

Simon Brelaud holds a doctorate on Ancient Christianity in the Sasanian Empire (3rd—7th century) from the Sorbonne University in Paris, where he taught the history of ancient Rome. He was a Research Fellow in the Center for Advanced Studies “Migration & Mobility in Late Antiquity and the High Middle Ages” at the University of Tübingen. He is participating in several ongoing archaeological and epigraphic projects in the Middle East, including in Iraqi Kurdistan, Jordan and Turkey.

Brelaud’s research focuses on the history of Christians in Mesopotamia and its borders in Late...

Benjamin Brinner

Professor Emeritus of Music; CMES Senior Research Scholar
Music

Benjamin Brinner is a Professor of Music. His research interests include music cognition, Javanese and Balinese gamelan and Middle Eastern music. Before coming to UC Berkeley, Brinner taught in Israel at Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He also directed the Workshop for Non-Western Music at the Jerusalem Music Center, where he taught Javanese gamelan, coordinated instruction in Arab, Jewish, and East African music and produced concert series dedicated to exposing the public to a broader range of musical practices than was then generally known in Israel. Returning...

Robin Buller

Tandem Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Migration, Institute for European Studies; Independent Journalist; CMES Senior Research Scholar

Robin Buller a historian of Sephardi Jews, the Jewish Mediterranean, and Jewish migration and a Tandem Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Migration at University of California Berkeley's Institute for European Studies and the German Historical Institute West. Dr. Buller received her PhD in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and was previously a dissertation fellow with the Association for Jewish Studies and a Saul Kagan Fellow in Advanced Shoah Studies with the Claims Conference. She is also a podcast host for New Books in Jewish...

Ahmad Diab

Assistant Professor of Arabic Literature and Middle Eastern Cinema; CMES Senior Research Scholar
Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures

Ahmad Diab is Assistant Professor of Modern Arabic Literature and Middle Eastern Cinema in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures and Affiliate Faculty in the Arts Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his B.A. from Damascus University, majoring in English Literature. He completed an M.A. in English Literature at City University of New York while on a Fulbright scholarship. He was awarded a Ph.D. from the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, New York University. On an Erasmus Mundus scholarship he spent a semester of research at...

Ehud Eiran

Visiting Professor; CMES Senior Research Scholar

Dr. Ehud (Udi) Eiran is a Senior Lecturer (US Associate Professor) of International Relations, University of Haifa, Israel, and an (active!) Board member at Mitvim – a leading Israeli think tank. He is also a senior fellow at the center for the Research of Intelligence Methodology. Dr. Eiran directed the University of Haifa’s center for national security, and was one of the co-founders of its center for maritime strategy. He also served as the academic director of Israel’s National Security College, (on behalf of the University). Dr. Eiran held research appointments at Harvard Law School,...

Elsa El Mahdy

Arabic Language Coordinator; CMES Senior Research Scholar
Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures

After receiving her B.A. in Arabic from UC Berkeley, Elsa El Mahdy moved to Egypt to study at the American University in Cairo. There she received her M.A. in Arabic Studies, focusing on Arabic literature, followed by an M.A. in Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language (TAFL). Elsa’s current research project in Arabic language pedagogy is entitled “Teacher and Student Beliefs about Written Corrective Feedback on Student Writing in the Arabic Foreign Language Classroom.”

Elsadig Elsheikh

Director of the Global Justice Program, Othering & Belonging Institute; CMES Senior Research Scholar
Othering & Belonging Institute

Elsadig Elsheikh is the Director of the Global Justice Program at the Othering & Belonging Institute, where he oversees the program’s projects on corporate power, food systems, forced migration, inclusiveness index, Islamophobia, and human rights mechanisms; and manages the Shahidi Project, and the Nile Project.

Elsadig's research interests focus on the themes and socio-political dynamics related to state and citizenship; race and corporate power; and measuring social policies of exclusion and inclusion...

Samera Esmeir

Associate Professor of Rhetoric; CMES Senior Research Scholar
Rhetoric

Samera Esmeir is Associate Professor of Rhetoric at UC Berkeley. Her research and teaching are at the intersection of legal and political thought, Middle Eastern history and colonial and post-colonial studies. Her central intellectual focus thus far has been to examine how late-modern colonialism, with a particular focus on the Middle East, has introduced liberal juridical logics and grammars that in turn shaped modalities of political praxis, and how those have persisted in the post-colonial era and have traveled in different countries in the Middle East. Her first book, Juridical...

Munis Faruqui

Associate Professor of South & Southeast Asian Studies; Director of the Center for South Asian Studies; CMES Senior Research Scholar
South and Southest Asian Studies

Munis D. Faruqui is a historian. His focus is on the Muslim experience in South Asia, especially during the Mughal period. His books include: Princes of the Mughal Empire, 1504-1719 (Cambridge, 2012), Expanding Frontiers in South Asian and World History (co-edited with Richard Eaton, David Gilmartin and Sunil Kumar)(Cambridge, 2013), and Religious Interactions in Mughal India (co-edited with Vasudha Dalmia) (Oxford, 2014). He is currently working on a book focused on the Mughal Empire in the latter half of the seventeenth century. In 2014, Dr. Faruqui was one of...