Research Areas: the intellectual, religious and cultural history of Europe and the Near East, with a special focus on Western knowledge of the Arab, Ottoman and Persian world between 1450 – 1800
After completing his PhD at the University of Berne (Switzerland), Dr Jan Loop was awarded a Frances A. Yates long-term research fellowship at the Warburg Institute, London. In September 2012 he joined the School of History at the University of Kent where he had a chair in early modern history. As of August 2020 he is a Professor of Early Modern History and Religious Cultures at the University of Copenhagen.
Jan is a founding member of the Centre for the History of Arabic Studies in Europe at the Warburg Institute and he was a Principal Investigator, between 2013 and 2016, for the European-funded collaborative research project Encounters with the Orient in Early Modern European Scholarship (EOS). Together with colleagues from Madrid, Nantes and Naples, Jan is leading the ERC Synergy Project The European Qur'an. Islamic Scripture in European Religion and Culture (1150-1850). The project is funded with €10m over six years (2019-2025). At NYUAD he has been involved in developing the research initiative “Recognizing Religion(s). The Cultural Dynamics of Religious Encounters and Interactions in Historical Perspective,” which will start with an online seminar series in the autumn of 2020.