Julia Bray

Last updated

Julia Bray
Born (1952-09-28) 28 September 1952 (age 72)
Cambridge, England
Academic background
Education Collège Sévigné
Alma mater St Hilda's College, Oxford
St Cross College, Oxford
Institutions

Julia Margaret Bray (born 28 September 1952) is a British scholar of Oriental studies who specialises in Medieval to Early Modern Arabic literature. [1] [2] From 2012 to 2023, she was the Laudian Professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St John's College, Oxford. She previously taught Arabic and Arabic literature at the universities of Manchester, Edinburgh and St Andrews, and was Professeur de littérature arabe médiévale at the Paris 8 University from 2003 to 2012.

Contents

Early life and education

Bray was born on 28 September 1952 in Cambridge, England. She was educated at the Collège Sévigné, an all-girls private school in Paris, France. She read Oriental Studies at St Hilda's College, Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1974. After working as an archivist, she studied for a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree at St Cross College, Oxford. She completed her DPhil in 1984. [3]

Academic career

In 1983, Bray joined the University of Manchester as a lecturer in Arabic. She was then a senior lecturer in Arabic at the University of Edinburgh from 1989 to 1992. She was a visiting lecturer at St Antony's College, Oxford for the 1994/95 academic year, and James Mew Senior Research Fellow in Arabic in the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, from 1994 to 1996. She was senior lecturer in Arabic at the University of St Andrews from 1996 to 2003, and then Professeur de littérature arabe médiévale at the University of Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis from 2003 to 2012. [3]

Since September 2012, she has been the Laudian Professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford. [4] She is also a Fellow of St John's College, Oxford. [3] She co-edits (with Wen-chin Ouyang) the Edinburgh Studies in Classical Arabic Literature monograph series, published by Edinburgh University Press. [5] The chair was renamed the Abdulaziz Saud AlBabtain Laudian Professorship of Arabic in after a re-endowment in 2016. [6] Bray retired from the position in 2023, and was replaced by Tahera Qutbuddin. [7]

Bray's research covers medieval Arabic literature (pre-1800), especially poetry, narrative and biography. [8] [9] As well as formal literary analysis of Classical Arabic literature, [9] she uses it as a source for the history of ideas, and to analyse social and cultural meanings. [8] [9]

Selected works

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Malcolm Bowie</span>

Malcolm McNaughtan Bowie FBA was a British academic, and Master of Christ's College, Cambridge from 2002 to 2006. An acclaimed scholar of French literature, Bowie wrote several books on Marcel Proust, as well as books on Mallarmé, Lacan, and psychoanalysis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">H. A. R. Gibb</span> Scottish orientalist (1895–1971)

Sir Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb, known as H. A. R. Gibb, was a Scottish historian and Orientalist.

Benedikt Sigmund Johannes Isserlin was a scholar of Hebrew who was Head of the Department of Semitic Studies at the University of Leeds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies</span> Department of the University of Oxford

The Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, is a subdivision of the University of Oxford.

Alfred Felix Landon Beeston, FBA was an English Orientalist best known for his studies of Arabic language and literature, and of ancient Yemeni inscriptions, as well as the history of pre-Islamic Arabia. His works were generally published under the name A. F. L. Beeston.

Derek Attridge FBA is a South African-born British academic in the field of English literature. He is Emeritus Professor of English and Related Literature at the University of York, having retired from the university in 2016, and is a Fellow of the British Academy. Attridge undertakes research in South African literature, James Joyce, modern fiction, deconstruction and literary theory and the history and performance of poetry. He is the author or editor of thirty books, and has published eighty articles in essay collections and a similar number in journals. He has held a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Leverhulme Research Professorship, and Fellowships at the National Humanities Center, the Bogliasco Foundation, the Camargo Foundation, and The Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, and All Souls and St. Catherine's Colleges, Oxford. Among the visiting positions he has held have been professorships at the American University of Cairo, the University of Sassari, the University of Cape Town, Northwestern University, Wellesley College, and the University of Queensland.

David Alexander Syme Fergusson is a Scottish theologian and Presbyterian minister. Since 2021, he has been Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge.

Helen Wenda Small is the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Merton College, Oxford. She was previously a fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laudian Professor of Arabic</span> Professorship at the University of Oxford

The position of Laudian Professor of Arabic, now known as the Abdulaziz Saud AlBabtain Laudian Professor, at the University of Oxford was established in 1636 by William Laud, who at the time was Chancellor of the University of Oxford and Archbishop of Canterbury. The first professor was Edward Pococke, who was working as a chaplain in Aleppo in what is now Syria when Laud asked him to return to Oxford to take up the position. Laud's regulations for the professorship required lectures on Arabic grammar and literature to be delivered weekly during university vacations and Lent. He also provided that the professor's lectures were to be attended by all medical students and Bachelors of Arts at the university, although this seems not to have happened since Pococke had few students, despite the provision for non-attenders to be fined. In 1881, a university statute repealed Laud's regulations and provided that the professor was to lecture in "the Arabic, Syriac, and Chaldee Languages", and attached the professorship to a fellowship at St John's College. In 2016, a large re-endowment from Kuwaiti philanthropist Abdulaziz Saud Al Babtain occasioned a change of the chair's name.

Stephen Reay was a Scottish academic and clergyman, who was Laudian Professor of Arabic from 1840 until his death.

Gerard Jan Henk van Gelder FBA is a Dutch academic who was the Laudian Professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford from 1998 to 2012.

Marilyn Louise Booth is an author, scholar and translator of Arabic literature. Since 2015, she has been the Khalid bin Abdullah Al Saud Professor for the Study of the Contemporary Arab World at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.

Abdulaziz Saud Albabtain was a Kuwaiti poet, businessman, and philanthropist.

Mohammed Mustafa Badawi was a scholar of English and Arabic literature. He was a Research Fellow of St. Antony's College at the University of Oxford from 1967 to 1969, and was then elected to the College's Governing Body. Upon retirement in 1992, he became an Emeritus Fellow.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alison Noble</span> British engineer (born 1965)

Julia Alison Noble is a British engineer. She has been Technikos Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Oxford and a fellow of St Hilda's College since 2011, and Associate Head of the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division at the university. As of 2017, she is the chief technology officer of Intelligent Ultrasound Limited, an Oxford spin-off in medical imaging that she cofounded. She was director of the Oxford Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBME) from 2012 to 2016. In 2023 she became the Foreign Secretary of The Royal Society.

Ann Margaret Jefferson, is a British scholar of French literature. She was a fellow and tutor in French at New College, Oxford, from 1987 to 2015, and professor of French at the University of Oxford from 2006 to 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter France</span> British philologist

Peter France, FBA, FRSE, is a British academic and scholar of French literature, who served as Professor of French at the University of Edinburgh from 1980 to 1990.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tahera Qutbuddin</span> Indian Professor of Arabic (born 1964)

Tahera Qutbuddin is the Abdulaziz Saud AlBabtain Laudian Professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford. A Guggenheim Fellow (2020) and a winner of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2021, she is best known for her works on the teachings of Imam Ali, Arabic oratory, and the usage of Arabic in India, especially in the Dawoodi Bohra Tayyibi tradition.

Celia Kerslake (1946–2023) was a British Turkologist. She was the University Lecturer in Turkish and a Fellow of St Antony's College at the University of Oxford (1988–2011). She is known as the author of Turkish: A Comprehensive Grammar (2005) and Turkish: An Essential Grammar (2011), both written jointly with Aslı Göksel.

References

  1. "Julia Bray". Faculty of Oriental Studies. University of Oxford. Archived from the original on 13 July 2017. Retrieved 12 August 2014.
  2. "Editors". People. Library of Arabic Literature. Retrieved 12 August 2014.
  3. 1 2 3 "Bray, Prof. Julia Margaret, (born 28 Sept. 1952)". Who's Who 2020. Oxford University Press. 1 December 2022. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U257435 . Retrieved 10 July 2021.
  4. "Laudian Professorship of Arabic". Notices. University of Oxford. 31 May 2012. Archived from the original on 3 December 2012. Retrieved 12 August 2014.
  5. "Professor Julia Bray". Fellows & Staff. University of Oxford. Retrieved 22 February 2015.
  6. "Professorship in Arabic (Abdulaziz Saud AlBabtain Laudian Professorship) job with University of Oxford | 339973". The Chronicle of Higher Education Jobs. Retrieved 11 July 2021. The University intends to appoint to the Abdulaziz Saud AlBabtain Laudian Professorship in Arabic with effect from 1st October 2022 or as soon as possible thereafter. The Laudian Chair in Arabic, established in 1636, is one of the oldest professorships of Arabic in Europe. The Professorship was generously re-endowed in 2016 by Mr Abdulaziz Saud AlBabtain.
  7. "Departmental Lecturer, Classical Arabic Literature, University of Oxford". MEMOs. Retrieved 12 February 2024.
  8. 1 2 "Julia Bray". Faculty of Oriental Studies. University of Oxford. Retrieved 11 July 2021.
  9. 1 2 3 "Professor Julia Bray". St John's College. University of Oxford. Retrieved 11 July 2021.