Projects
Leaving Europe, Navigating Access: Status Migration, Traveling Habitus, and Racial Capital in Euro-Maghrebi Mobilities to the United Arab Emirates KU Leuven
This doctoral thesis is an ethnographic study that examines the emigration motives and social itineraries of second-generation Euro-Maghrebis who resettle to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) using a qualitative methodology. It focuses in particular on tertiary-educated EU citizens born and raised in Belgium, France and the Netherlands, who had at least one parent born in Morocco, Algeria or Tunisia, and who were themselves either ...
The archeology of the Oil Industry. Identifying the bitumen industry in Antiquity and the development fo a GCxGC and an LCxLC toolset for the geochemical sourcing of bitumen. Ghent University
The "Archeology of the Petroleum Industry" will lay bare the root of what currently can be considered as the biggest commerce in the world: the petroleum industry. Although what may seem as a 20th century commodity, actually started in Antiquity with trade in bitumen; a petroleum-related product which surfaces naturally. The import of Iranian bitumen into the Persian Gulf during the late third- and second millennium B.C. may be considered as ...
Gibala and the East Mediterranean. A multidisciplinary research project investigating cultural interaction between Tell Tweini and the East Mediterranean in the bronze and Iron Ages. KU Leuven
Aquinas in Context: Being and Essence in Thomas Aquinas and its Source in Avicenna and William of Auvergne KU Leuven
Due to the burgeoning recognition of the influence of Arabic Philosophy on the Medieval Latin West, it can now be seen, although it is not widely recognized, that the metaphysical teachings of Thomas Aquinas are not merely the product of his Christian Aristotelianism, nor simply of his own unique genius, but are heavily indebted to the thought of the 10th and 11th century Persian philosopher Ibn Sina (Avicenna). In fact, it was Aquinas’s ...
Ancient Wisdom and Platonism KU Leuven
The project aims at offering an innovative perspective on the reception of Plato by exploring ‘Platonist theories of ancient wisdom’. Specifically, it investigates how philosophers during the Roman Imperial Era (1st c. BC to 2nd c. AD) construed Plato’s place in history and relationship with earlier wisdom traditions. Through identifying, translating and analysing relevant, often underexplored writings of ten Platonist philosophers, it ...
Dialectical Reasoning and Topical Argument in the Middle Ages: an Inquiry into the Commentaries on Aristotle's Topics (1250-1500) KU Leuven
In my dissertation I have analysed 35 commentaries on the Topics from various epochs and places. I have focused my attention on the possible influences of the different views about logic and logical doctrines on the different approaches to the Topics that Medieval commentators employed. The main outcome of this scrutiny was the identification of two different and autonomous exegetical traditions, namely British, and continental or ...