Prof. Dr. Sarah Stroumsa

Profile

Academic positionEmeritus
Research fieldsIslamic Studies, Arabian Studies, Semitic Studies,Jewish Studies
KeywordsPhilosophy and Theology in Arabic, Medieval Judaeo-Arabic Literature, Intellectual History of Islamic Spain, Medieval Polemical Literature in Arabic, Medieval Exegetical Literature in Arabic
Honours and awards

2025: Orden Pour le mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste

2023: The Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco, associate member

2023: The Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities, member

2022: Middle East & Islamic Studies Association of Israel , Ourstanding Member

2021: The American Philosophical Society

2018: Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize

2016: European Academy of Sciences and Arts, member

2012: Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, meber

2010: Humboldt Research Prize

2009: Italian Order of Merit O.S.S.I

Current contact address

CountryIsrael
CityJerusalem
InstitutionHebrew University of Jerusalem
InstituteDepartment of Jewish Thought
Homepagehttps://huji.academia.edu/SarahStroumsa

Host during sponsorship

Prof. Dr. Sabine SchmidtkeInstitut für Islamwissenschaft, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin
Start of initial sponsorship01/09/2011

Programme(s)

2010Humboldt Research Award Programme

Nominator's project description

Professor Stroumsa is one of today's leading scholars on philosophy and religious thought in the medieval Islamic world. Her books and articles are highly valued in the international community of scholars in the fields of Judaic and Islamic Studies as well as Medieval Studies. In July 2008 she was elected by the Senate of the Hebrew University as the institutions's new rector. This is the first time in the Hebrew University's history that a woman has been elected rector. The international standing of the nominee is clearly indicated by her membership on the editorial and advisory boards of several leading publications and academic steering committees in Jewish and Islamic Studies, both in Israel and abroad. To the extent possible, Stroumsa reaches out to Palestinian academia as well. Professor Stroumsa is regularly invited to international conferences and research groups abroad and in Israel, and she has herself organized numerous important events and research groups in her fields of interest in Israel. Her reputation as a scholar and teacher has led her to be invited regularly to give lectures and seminars around the world, and to spend extended periods abroad as research scholar. Stroumsa's main academic concern throughout her career is a multifocal approach to the intellectual history in the medieval world of Islam within the applicable multiconfessional cultural context. Over the last twenty years, Sarah Stroumsa has produced a prodigious output of scholarly articles and books (in English, Hebrew, French, and German; with translations of some studies into Arabic and Spanish) in the fields of philosophy and theology in Arabic in the early Islamic middle ages, medieval Judaeo-Arabic literature, medieval polemical and exegetical literature in Arabic, intellectual history of Islamic Spain, with special focus on the transmission of ideas between the religious communities. Her most recent monograph Maimonides in His World: Portrait of A Mediterranean Thinker (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009) in many ways stands for her mastery of both Islamic and Judaic Studies and for her exemplary multiconfessional approach. Professor Stroumsa is hosted by Professor Sabine Schmidtke at Freie Universität Berlin. In Germany, she will primarily work on her project Thinkers of 'This Peninsula': New Perspectives in the Philosophy of al-Andalus, a comprehensive attempt to rewrite the history of philosophy of al-Andalus by viewing the various products of philosophy in the Iberian peninsula, Jewish, Muslim and Christian, as parts and stages of one common intellectual history and as a continuous development. The purpose of the study is to offer an integrative approach to the history of Islamic philosophy in Spain, with focus on the intellectual developments in al-Andalus in the context of the development of philosophical schools in the Orient. As such it will no doubt revolutionize modern scholarship on the intellectual history of al-Andalus.