Elected an Honorary Member
Arabic Studies Professor at Freie Universität Elected to Academy of Arts and Sciences
№ 114/2011 from Apr 29, 2011
The Arabic studies professor, Angelika Neuwirth from Freie Universität Berlin, has been elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Neuwirth is one of 16 personalities from Europe, Canada, South America, Asia, and Africa, to be elected to this prestigious honorary society. The new honorary members include the Nobel laureate in literature, Mario Vargas Llosa; the composer and singer Leonhard Cohen; and the architect Eduardo Souto de Moura. They will be inducted at a ceremony on October 1 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center. Its elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs. Its current membership consists of 4,000 American Fellows and 600 Foreign Honorary Members. They include more than 250 Nobel laureates and 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.
Prof. Dr. Angelika Neuwirth studied Persian language and literature in Tehran, and Semitic, Arabic, and Islamic studies as well as classical philology at Göttingen and Jerusalem. In 1972 she completed her doctorate at the University of Göttingen and in 1977 her habilitation at LMU Munich. She then taught and conducted research in Amman, Jordan. Following periods in Munich, Cairo, and Bamberg, she has been a professor of Arabic studies at Freie Universität Berlin since 1991. From 1994 to 1999, she was also the director of the Oriental Institute of the German Oriental Society Beirut and Istanbul. In 2008 she received an honorary doctorate in Catholic theology from the University of Bamberg. She has been a member of Leopoldina, the German National Academy of Sciences, since 2009. One focus of Neuwirth’s work is on classical and modern Arabic literature and the Koran in the late Roman context.
For further information, please contact:
Prof. Dr. Angelika Neuwirth, Seminar for Semitic and Arabic Studies, Freie Universität Berlin
Tel.: +49 (0)30 / 838-53597, Email: angelikaneuwirth@hotmail.com