Matthew Sharp is an independent scholar in Philadelphia. He holds a PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations with a concentration in Middle Eastern Literatures and Societies from the University of Pennsylvania. His dissertation, “On Behalf of the Sultan: The Late Ottoman State and the Cultivation of British and American Converts to Islam” (2020; Roger M.A. Allen Dissertation Prize in Arabic and Islamic Studies) narrates how the Ottoman state and Arab and Turkish intellectuals propagated news and cultivated relationships with American and British converts to Islam in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His upcoming chapter in Muslim Women in Britain, 1800-1950 (Hurst, 2023) will explore the life and contributions of key convert women in the Victorian era Liverpool Muslim community; particularly the role of the American convert named Nafeesah M.T. Keep (1844-1925). Additionally, a chapter in the forthcoming Islam and Muslims in Victorian Britain: New Perspectives (Bloomsbury, 2023) will advance a more critical appraisal of the so-called “first and last Sheikh el-Islam of the British Isles,” William Abdullah Quilliam (1856-1932).
Prior to coming to Philadelphia, he lived in Amman, Jordan and Beirut, Lebanon for nine years, which culminated in an MA in Middle Eastern History from the American University of Beirut (2013).