Research Project Involving Prof. Nahyan Fancy is Awarded Grant

May 28, 2015

A project on which Nahyan Fancy, associate professor of history at DePauw University, is a collaborator has been awarded a partnership grant from Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).  The project, "Science Teaching in Pre-Modern and Modern Islamic Societies: Pedagogical Approaches in Religious, Institutional, and Geographical Contexts," involves the McGill Centre for Islam and Science, the University of California at Berkeley, the Max Planck Institute, and Istanbul Medeniyet University.

The grants provide support for new and existing formal partnerships over four to seven years to advance research, research training and/or knowledge mobilization in the social sciences and humanities through mutual co-operation and sharing of intellectual leadership, as well as through resources as evidenced by cash and/or in-kind contributions.

"Science teaching in an Islamic context has broad implications for understanding Islam's engagement with non-religious knowledge, and especially with knowledge whose origins are external to the Islamic world," notes a summary of the project. "Our proposal aims to address science teaching both in the premodern and modern contexts. In so doing our interdisciplinary partnership seeks to understand the range of science teaching and compare whether the methods developed then might still have relevance for teaching science in contemporary Islamic societies."

Learn more here.

Dr. Fancy, who joined the DePauw faculty in 2006, teaches Middle East/Comparative History. He has been offered membership in the Institute for Advanced Study for the Fall 2015 semester.

The author of Science and Religion in Mamluk Egypt: Ibn al-Nafis, Pulmonary Transit and Bodily Resurrection, Fancy holds a B.A. from Knox College and a Ph.D. in history and philosophy of science from University of Notre Dame.

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