Jörg Matthias Determann's Blog, page 4

Presentation at 2025 Annual Meeting of the British Society for the History of Science

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Sam Robinson and Jim Secord for accepting a paper of mine for inclusion in the 2025 Annual Meeting of the British Society for the History of Science (BSHS) at the University of Cambridge. My presentation is entitled “Isaac Asimov and Science Education in Twentieth-Century America.” I will speak at panel “7B: Science Fiction, Science Fans, and Public Culture” in the Hopkins Lecture Theatre in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science in the morning of July 10. I thank my fellow panelists Jim Endersby and Efram Sera-Shriar as well as our chair, Sarah Dillon, for being part of this session. I further acknowledge the essential contributions to my investigations made by my research assistants. They include my student employees Naila Aliyeva, Rizwanul Islam and Shugyla Karshygakyzy plus my volunteer Maira Azhar. https://conference.bshs.org.uk/progra...

Journal of Arabian Studies 14.2 out now

Being responsible for editing book reviews at our Journal of Arabian Studies, I extend my sincere gratitude to those who wrote for our newest issue (14.2): Aisha Al-Sarihi, Dawn Chatty, Joseph A. Kéchichian, Michael Christopher Low, Nadya Amalia Putri Hapsari and Sheam Abdul Aziz Khan. They evaluated works published by Palgrave Macmillan, Cornell University Press, Eyrolles, Verso Books, Springer and Open Book Publishers respectively. Gerd Nonneman was my closest collaborator in moving the pieces through our production pipeline. They were first published online in May and June 2025, although the issue itself bears the date 2024. See everything on the website of Taylor & Francis: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjab2...

Membership in Editorial Board of the Kufa Journal of Arts

You have my sincere thanks and لك خالص الشكر, Ahmed Shaker Alalaq, for appointing me to the Editorial Board of the Kufa Journal of Arts (مجلة آداب الكوفة)! I am very honored to serve alongside Ahmed, our managing editor Safaa Almudhafar, our staff members, linguistic reviewers as well as my fellow board members. The Kufa Journal of Arts is published by the University of Kufa’s College of Arts and is funded by the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. It was established in 2008 and is included in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Contact information for our Editorial Team can be found here: https://journal.uokufa.edu.iq/index.p...

Abstract and visuals of keynote in Tunis

Thank you, عيشك, merci, dank u, danke and gracias to everyone who made the ENIS Spring School ’25 at the Université de Tunis in collaboration with the Merian Centre for Advanced Studies (MECAM) in the Maghreb a success! Their names are too numerous for a social media post, but I have to mention Joas Wagemakers, Sara Muller, Hiba Mednini and Julius Dihstelhoff. Mònica Colominas Aparicio and MECAM generously shared photographs. They include snapshots of my keynote and group photos during our excursion. As I walked the streets of Tunis for the first time since 2006, I also remembered with profound gratitude my previous stay to learn Arabic at Bourguiba School (معهد بورقيبة للغات الحية) together with Sonja Buchberger and Caroline Herfert. Find the abstract of my keynote on “Imagining Futures in Muslim Societies” and a link to my visuals on Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/129618454/Im...

New star names adopted in April and May 2025

It is with the deepest gratitude to my fellow members of the International Astronomical Union’s Working Group on Star Names (WGSN) that I am sharing an update on our work. In April and May 2025, we adopted the following stars names: Alfarasalkamil (الفرس الكامل), Honores, Kaffalmusalsala (كفّ المسلسة), Paradys, Rasalnaqa (رأس الناقة) and Udkadua. I want to give a shout-out to our group’s chair Susanne M. Hoffmann as well as Danielle Adams, Khalid AlAjaji and Roland Laffitte for researching and discussing the Arabic star names with me. I would also like to share that Mohammad Sadegh Faghanpour from the National Astronomy Education Coordinator (NAEC) team of Iran (part of the IAU Office of Astronomy for Education) joined the WGSN this month. I am very excited about the conversations we will have about further Arabic and Persian star names in particular. The scholarship of our group is documented in our All Skies Encyclopaedia hosted by the University of Jena: https://xing.fmi.uni-jena.de/mediawik...

Written Evidence to UK Parliament supporting SETI

Ein sehr großes Dankeschön (a very big thank you) to Michael Bohlander of Durham University for inviting me to be one of the supporting contributors to Written Evidence submitted to the House of Lords Select Committee on UK Engagement with Space. Our submission is supporting the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and the Research into Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP). I thank my fellow contributors, especially Michael Cifone. I also appreciate the work of Sabrina Asghar in handling our document. You can get the files from the website of the UK Parliament. https://committees.parliament.uk/writ...

Interview in ISHPSSB Newsletter

Estoy muy agradecido (I am very grateful) to David Suárez Pascal of the National Autonomous University of Mexico for interviewing me for the Newsletter of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology (ISHPSSB). I am also deeply thankful to the University of Florida’s Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, who serves as the President of ISHPSSB, for inviting me to make this contribution. David spoke to me on Zoom and edited the transcript. The first part of our conversation appeared in the ISHPSSB Newsletter 36, number 1 (issue 68, May 2025), on pages 21 to 25. It includes a portrait photograph by Katya Reshetova. The Newsletter is available in PDF and HTML. The latter version is linked here: https://www.ishpssb.org/news/newslett...

Keynote on Imagining Futures in Muslim Societies

Thank you in advance, alvast bedankt, merci d’avance and شكراً مقدماً to the organizers of the ENIS Spring School ’25 for hosting me at the Université de Tunis from May 27 to 30, 2025. I say dank u to Joas Wagemakers and Sara Muller and عيشك to Hiba Mednini in particular. On May 27, 2025, I am scheduled to give the first keynote on “Imagining Futures in Muslim Societies” at the Faculté des Sciences Humaines et Sociales de Tunis. As I am getting ready to travel, I am thinking with thankfulness of Hamda Tamzali and his family who first welcomed me to Tunisia in 2004. I am also conscious of my debt to Jeanne Vaz and Marilou Magsayo Semetara for looking after my daughter Maria in my absence from Doha. Aline Hostettler posted a preliminary programme and logistics guide to the website of the Université de Lausanne, one of the partner institutions of the Spring School: https://www.unil.ch/news/en/174161522...

WTUFO episode hosted by Caleb Mayo

I sincerely appreciate Caleb Mayo’s invitation to appear on his show WTUFO. Our episode, S5E2, was released on YouTube, Buzzsprout and X on May 23, 2025. It includes music by John Hubbell. I thank Michael Bohlander for recommending me to Caleb. I am further thankful to my colleagues in the Department of Technology Services at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar, especially Khai Pablico, Haroon Al Bulooshi and Mariam Wissa, for providing me with a new Dell laptop just in time for the recording of this interview last month. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYNsj...

Review of Donald Baker’s book Making Qatar University

I am very grateful and خیلی سپاسگزارم to Mahjoob Zweiri for allowing me to write a review of Donald Noel Baker’s book Making Qatar University (1973–2018): An Informal History (Qatar University Press). My article appeared in the Journal of Gulf Studies (JGS) 1, no. 2 (2024), 193–95. Intellect first published it online in 2025. I further thank Byrad Yyelland for his valuable comments on my manuscript. Naomi Curston kindly shared the cover image of this JGS issue with me. The digital object identifier (DOI) of my publication is: https://doi.org/10.1386/jgs_00011_5