Institute for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Societies, University of Bern
E-mail: serena.tolino@islam.unibe.ch
Biography
Serena Tolino is Associate Professor for Islamic Studies at the University of Bern since February 2020. From 2016 to 2020 she was Junior Professor for Islamic Studies at the Asia and Africa Institute of the University of Hamburg, while from 2012 to 2016 she held a post-position at the History Department of the University of Zurich, where she worked on “The masculinity of Court eunuchs in the Fatimid Empire”. In Fall 2013 she was visiting fellow at the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard University.
She was awarded a Ph.D. and the title of Doctor Europaeus from the University of Naples “L’Orientale” and the Martin-Luther-Universität, Halle Wittenberg (summa cum laude). She received her BA and MA in “Sciences of Languages, History and Cultures of Islamic and Mediterranean Countries” from the University of Naples “L’Orientale”. While studying for her MA, she moved to Cairo, where she spent three years learning Arabic. After completing her MA, she was awarded a full-time Ph.D. grant from the Graduate School Society and Culture in Motion, Halle-Wittenberg, where she wrote her Ph.D. on “Homosexual acts and Homosexuality in Islamic and statutory Law: some notes on the Egyptian case, with some references to the Lebanese case”.