Reyhan Durmaz is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Religious Studies. Her research interests include Syriac Christianity, Christian-Muslim relations in the Middle Ages, religion and society in late antiquity, hagiography, storytelling, and popular religion. Her first book project, tentatively titled Beyond Hagiography: Stories between Christianity and Islam in the Middle Ages, examines the transmission of non-biblical saints' stories and cults from Christianity to Islam. Her other research projects include study of rural Christianities in the Middle Ages in the eastern Mediterranean. Dr. Durmaz received her Ph.D. from Brown University (2019), with a Joukowsky Outstanding Dissertation Award in Humanities. Her research has also been supported by the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.
Dr. Durmaz currently serves as the co-director of the Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins, and is a member of the American Academy of Religion, Society of Biblical Literature, North American Patristics Society, and the Middle East Studies Association.