Board

The board of the NSMES is elected for a three year period at the Nordic Conference which takes place every third year.

The current board is:

• Jacob Høigilt (Norway): Chair

Jacob Høigilt is professor of Middle East Studies at the University of Oslo. He does research on language, ideology, and media in the Arab Middle East and  North Africa, concentrating mostly on contemporary issues. Geographically, his research focuses on Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon and Tunisia.

Email: jacob.hoigilt@ikos.uio.no

• Christine Crone (Denmark): Vice chair

Christine Crone is an assistant professor in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses on contemporary media, cultural productions, and cultural producers in and from the Arab world. Geographically, she mainly works on Syria, Lebanon, and the Levant more broadly.

Email: gbh330@hum.ku.dk 

• Pelle Valentin Olsen (Norway): Secretary

Pelle Valentin Olsen is associate professor of Middle East History at the University of Bergen. With a particular focus on Iraq, he works on the cultural, social, and transnational history of the modern Middle East. His research and teaching focus on the history of leisure, labor, gender, sexuality, popular culture, cultural production, and Middle Eastern Jewish history.

Email: secretary@nsmes.org

• Thomas Brandt Fibiger (Denmark): Treasurer

Email: thomas.fibiger@cas.au.dk

• Tiina Hyyppä (Finland)
  

Tiina Hyyppä is doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. She specializes in the Syrian war and in civil governance during war. Her wider research interests include nonviolent activism, civilian survival strategies, and political violence. She holds an MA in Islamic Studies and is a member of editorial board of Babylon, Nordic Journal for Middle Eastern Studies.

Email: tiina.hyyppa@helsinki.fi

• Tiina Järvi (Finland)

Tiina Järvi is a postdoctoral researcher at Tampere University. She earned her doctorate in social anthropology, and her research focuses on prolonged refugeeness and ways of living amid multidimensional crises. Järvi has explored themes such as exile, decolonization, subjectivity, and the politics of the future among Palestinian refugee communities, as well as state negligence and lived failure in the context of Lebanon.

Email: tiina.jarvi@tuni.fi

• Thorir Jonsson Hraundal (Iceland)
  

Thorir Jonsson Hraundal is a PhD in Medieval Studies from the University of Bergen, and currently a lecturer and director of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Iceland. His research is focused on medieval Arabic sources on the eastwards expansion of Scandinavians during the Viking age.

Email: thorir@hi.is

• Hassan Karakilinc (Iceland)

Email: hasan@hi.is 

• Pernilla Myrne (Sweden)

Pernilla Myrne is an associate professor of Arabic at University of Gothenburg, Sweden, where her teaching encompasses Arabic literature and history. Her research examines Arabic manuscript culture and history of ideas, with a focus on sexuality and gender.

Email: pernilla.myrne@sprak.gu.se

• Oliver Scharbrodt (Sweden)

Oliver Scharbrodt is Professor of Islamic Studies at Lund University. He researches modern, contemporary and classical forms of Islam, employing both historical and ethnographic research methods. His interests include modern Islamic reform, Shia Islam, Sufism, Islamic messianism and as well as the historical and contemporary presence of Muslims in Europe. He is particularly interested in making current theories and methods in Religious Studies relevant to the academic study of Islam.

Email: oliver.scharbrodt@ctr.lu.se 

Chairs of the NSMES

The chairs of the NSMES have been:

• Heikki Palva (1935-2022, Helsinki) 1989-1992
  
• Tryggve Kronholm (1939-1999, Uppsala) 1992-1998
  
• Bjørn Olav Utvik (Oslo) 1998-2007
  
• Jakob Skovgaad-Petersen (Copenhagen) 2007-11
  
• Leif Stenberg (Lund) 2011-19
• Mark Sedgwick (Aarhus) 2019-2025
• Jacob Høigilt (Oslo) 2025-