Mary Elston is Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oslo pursuing a project on the conceptual history of Arabic concepts of “tradition” in the modern Arab world. The project is funded by the European Union 2021 Horizon postdoctoral fellowship, project no 101062451.
Mary’s scholarship combines historical, textual, and ethnographic methods to explore Islamic education, religion and politics, and conceptual change in the modern Arab world. Her book manuscript, Above Time: Reviving Tradition in the Modern Muslim World, analyzes how traditional education is conceptualized and practiced at al-Azhar, the preeminent institution of Sunni Islamic learning situated in Cairo. She received her PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University in 2020, and her dissertation won the Alwaleed Bin Talal prize for best dissertation in Islamic studies. Her research has been supported by the Loeb Dissertation Research Fellowship in Religious Studies, the Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship, the American Research Center in Egypt, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and Harvard University’s Center for African Studies.
PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS
Postdoctoral Fellow, Alwaleed Bin Talal Program in Islamic Studies, Harvard University (2022-2023)
Lecturer, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University (Spring 2022)
Visiting Researcher, Center for Middle East Studies, Harvard University (2020-2022)
Visiting Fellow, Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World, Harvard Law School (2020-2021)