Heather J. Sharkey

Heather J. Sharkey is a Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches classes on Middle Eastern, North African, and Islamic history. Before joining Penn’s faculty, she taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Trinity College in Connecticut. She was a Visiting Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris during the 2012-13 academic year. She holds degrees from Yale University (Anthropology, BA, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa), the University of Durham, England (Middle Eastern Studies, MPhil), and Princeton University (History, PhD). She has received many fellowships, including the Marshall, Fulbright-Hays, and Carnegie, and has won the Charles Ludwig Distinguished Teaching Award from the College of Arts and Sciences at Penn.