Middle East
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Countries and Areas in this Region
Countries and Areas in this Region
  • Armenia
  • Azerbaijan
  • Bahrain
  • Georgia
  • Iran
  • Iraq
  • Israel
  • Jordan
  • Kuwait
  • Lebanon
  • Oman
  • Palestinian Territories
  • Qatar
  • Saudi Arabia
  • Syria
  • Turkey
  • United Arab Emirates
  • Yemen
Fast Facts
  • 1,630 + Penn alumni located in the Middle East
  • 149 Penn students on average reported studying abroad annually in the Middle East
  • 230 + Penn faculty reporting more than 420 projects and activities in the Middle East
  • 31 active agreements with institutions in the Middle East

The Middle East has long been a region of interest for Penn. In 1887, the Penn Museum was founded to house artifacts from a Penn-led archaeological expedition to Mesopotamia, during which the ancient Sumerian city of Nippur was first excavated. Since then, the University has consistently pursued deeper engagement with the Middle East, and the Middle East Center, founded in 1965, promotes the interdisciplinary study of the region at Penn and throughout the Philadelphia area. Several Middle Eastern languages are currently offered at Penn, including less commonly taught languages such as Ottoman Turkish. Students can also choose from a diverse selection of short- and long-term study and internship opportunities in the region.

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Student Voices
Faculty Engagement
Documentary
Dreaming of Jerusalem
Peter Decherney
Cinema & Media Studies

Approximately 14,000 members of the Ethiopian Jewish community remain in Ethiopia, hoping that the Israeli government will give them permission to emigrate. Professor Decherney, an award-winning filmmaker whose previous works include a virtual reality documentary about a Kenyan refugee settlement, has recently completed a documentary called Dreaming of Jerusalem on the Jewish community in Gondar, Ethiopia.

Updated November 2020

Course, Student Internship
Food Journey in the Middle East
Heather Sharkey
Near East Languages and Civilizations

Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Heather Sharkey guided four undergraduates during their internships over the summer during which they studied food in the Middle East and pursued individual research projects on oranges, olive oil, coffee, and sorghum. The research internship was designed to offer students an opportunity to explore the political, economic, and social significance of these items to the region, while also building their professional development skills through virtual engagements. In addition, the students assisted Heather Sharkey in creatively adapting her Fall seminar, “Food in the Islamic Middle East” for the online format, and in developing a proposal for a new book on food history. The internships were made possible in partnership with the Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring (PURM) program.

Updated November 2020

Research
Environmental Motives and Behaviors
Femida Handy
Social Policy & Practice

Femida Handy is Professor of the School of Social Policy and Practice and Director of the PhD in Social Welfare Program, with research and teaching interests in economics of the nonprofit sector, volunteering, philanthropy, nonprofit management, environmental issues entrepreneurship, and microfinance. One of her research projects is a BSF-funded grant on intergenerational transmission of environmental motives and behaviors in a cross-country comparison of the US, Israel and Korea.  She and her research partners on this grant recently co-authored a paper entitled "Environmental Behavior in Three Countries: The Role of Intergenerational Transmission and Domains of Socialization" that will be published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology.

Updated November 2020

Research
Social Anthropology in Iran
Brian Spooner
Anthropology

Brian Spooner, Professor of Anthropology and Penn Museum Curator for Near Eastern Ethnology, has since the 1950s has been engaged in ethnographic, historical and linguistic research in the Middle East and the Islamic world, with a special focus on Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. His work in Iran was interrupted by the revolution in 1979, but in 1998 he was invited by Iran's President to return, and was able to set up an office in Tehran for the American Institute of Iranian Studies (for which he is Penn's trustee), and arrange Persian language courses in Tehran for American students every summer until 2005, when the newly elected president terminated the arrangement. His current research seeks to reevaluate the 1979 revolution in terms not only of the history of Iran and the Middle East but of world history.

Updated November 2020

Research
Migrant Labor in the UAE
Shing-Yi Wang
Economics

Shing-Yi Wang, a development economist and Associate Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at Wharton, has studied migrant laborers in the Middle East since 2013. In 2018, she was awarded a grant through the India Research and Engagement Fund to further her research on the distribution of gains in the contexts of workers from India seeking work opportunities in the United Arab Emirates.

Updated November 2020

Research
Archaeology in Azerbaijan
Lauren Ristvet
Archaeology

Lauren Ristvet, Associate Professor of Anthropology, has worked on archaeological sites in the Middle East and Near East for over twenty years, including most notably as the co-director of the Naxcivan Archaeological Project in Naxcivan, Azerbaijan, a combined survey and excavation project.

Updated November 2020

Cultural Preservation
Mosul Heritage Stabilization Project
Richard Zettler
Archaeology

In 2018, Richard L. Zettler, Associate Professor in Penn’s Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, was awarded a $2 million grant by the U.S. Department of State for cultural heritage stabilization work in and around Mosul in northern Iraq. Professor Zettler leads a team of Penn and Iraqi heritage specialists in this three-year project (Mosul Heritage Stabilization Project) to mitigate damage to significant cultural heritage sites of minority religious and ethnic communities caused by ISIS.

MEC
Featured Center
Middle East Center

The Middle East Center's (MEC) mission is to raise awareness about the unique circumstances of the Middle East and North Africa through implementing K-14 educational outreach programming, special events and academic lectures relating to the region.