Author Biography
Silvia Naef is a full professor, Arabic Studies Section, and director of the master program in Middle Eastern Studies (MAMO), Global Studies Institute, University of Geneva. She obtained her Ph.D. in 1993 with a thesis on modern art in the Arab world. She has taught in Tübingen, Basel and Toronto and has been a visiting professor in Sassari (Italy, 2012), the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris (2016), at Université St. Joseph, Beirut (2017) and a visiting researcher in Princeton (2003) and Göttingen (2013). Naef is a founding member of Manazir, Swiss Platform for the Study of Visual Arts, Architecture and Heritage in the MENA Region and Manazir Journal. Her research focusses on modern art, visual representations and images in the Arab and Islamic world; she is also interested in gender issues. She has been the principal investigator of the research project Other Modernities: Patrimony and Practices of Visual Expression Outside the West (2013-2017), funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Publications include À la recherche d’une modernité arabe (1996; Arabic 2008); Y a-t-il une question de l’image en Islam? (2015, several translations); Visual Modernity in the Arab World, Turkey and Iran: Reintroducing the ‘Missing Modern’, in Asiatische Studien/Etudes Asiatiques (2016, ed. with E. Helbig).
