World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies

Barcelona, July 19th - 24th 2010

For the first time the International Advisory Council has decided that two experts will receive the Award 2010 for their contribution in their specific areas of Middle East Studies. Therefore, Prof. Roger Owen, A.J. Meyer Professor of Middle East History at the University of Harvard and Prof. Josef Van Ess, Emiritus Professor of Islamic Studies and Semitic Languages at the University of Tübingen, Germany will receive the “WOCMES Award for Outstanding Contributions to Middle Eastern Studies 2010” in Barcelona on Tuesday 20th 2010.

Roger Owen
Roger Owen (born 1935) is A.J. Meyer Professor of Middle East History at the History Department of Harvard University. His work on the early modern and modern Middle East is a reference in the field. Its path breaking works on social, economic and political histories of the Arab World in general, and in Egypt in particular have positioned him as the leading historian of our time. But Roger Owen is also engaged in contemporary issues of the Middle East, and his position on crucial questions is highly appreciated. Prior to teaching at Harvard, he was a faculty member at Oxford University, where he served several times as the director of the St Antony’s College Middle East Centre. In addition to his teaching and scholarship Roger Owen has been visiting professor at the American University in Cairo, Berkeley and Austin. In 2007, he became member of the American Academy of Arts and Science and obtained a Doctorate in Humane Letters at the American University of Cairo.


Josef Van Ess
Josef Van Ess (born 1934) is Emeritus Professor of Islamic Studies and Semitic Languages at the University of Tübingen, Germany. He is the world's most distinguished scholar of classical kalam, the Muslim theology that was the precursor to, and foundation for, modern Islam. His outstanding publications focus on the History of the Islamic World, Islamic theology and philosophy, especially with respect to the formative period (8th-10th centuries) and the age of the Mongol conquest (13th-14th centuries), and also on Islamic mysticism. He was visiting professor at the University of California Los Angeles, in Princeton, Oxford and Paris (Collège de France and Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes) and at the American University in Beirut. He received an honorary Doctorate from the Ecole Pratique des Haute Etudes and from Georgetown University.