Johannes Makar

Johannes Makar

Johannes Makar

Johannes Makar is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC) at Harvard University. His interests lie in the social and intellectual histories of Christian Orthodox communities and Christian-Muslim relations in the Eastern Mediterranean. In his dissertation, Johannes examines how Coptic intellectuals responded and contributed to reformist currents in late Ottoman Egypt.

At Harvard, Johannes has served as Teaching Fellow in courses on modern Middle Eastern history, Islamic intellectual thought, Arabic, and Arabic literature. As a Pforzheimer Fellow, he is curating a research guide on Coptic studies for Harvard Library. Since 2018, he has served as the coordinator for the Research Methods in Islamic Studies Workshop of the Alwaleed Islamic Studies Program. In this capacity, he coordinates an ongoing series of seminars dedicated to library research, digital scholarship, and manuscript studies. In 2018-2020, he co-convened the Middle East Beyond Borders (MEBB) workshop.

Project: Coptic Civil Society and the Development of the Egyptian Public Sphere (ca. 1890-1920)