Event

Join us for a very special evening, featuring the new director of the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania, Harun Küçük. Dr. Küçük will be discussing the role and importance of science in Middle Eastern societies, drawing on his work as a historian of early modern Ottoman Empire. He will also cover the politics and significance of science in contemporary Middle Eastern cultures, including debates over the role of science and religion, technology, modernity and a wide range of themes.

Harun Küçük is Director of the Middle East Center and Associate Professor of History and Science Studies. He received his BA in Liberal Arts from St. John's College and an MA in History at Sabancı University in Istanbul, Turkey. He completed his doctoral work on History and Science Studies at University of California, San Diego (2012). Prior to joining Penn's Department of History and Sociology of Science, he was a lecturer at Sabancı, Şehir and Boğaziçi Universities in Istanbul and held pre- and post-doctoral fellowships at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. His first book, Science without Leisure: Practical Naturalism in Istanbul, 1660-1732 (Pittsburgh, 2019) is a history of vernacular science in the Ottoman Empire.