Péter Nagy (Hungary)

As an Islamic art historian and archaeologist, I am particularly interested in the architecture of the medieval Islamic Mediterranean. That is to say, my main goal is to resuscitate historical sites that are otherwise silent today, figure out their raisons d’être, what they reveal about activities that once took place in them, and how people experienced and understood their built environments.

After finishing high school in Hungary in 2008, I first studied Arabic in Egypt and Syria, and later earned my BA degree in Arabic Studies from the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. During those years, I took a specialisation in Islamic art since my interests tended to focus on the material culture of the Islamic world. I often supplemented my classroom studies with self-organised study trips to Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Spain, Italy, Morocco, etc. After a gap year spent in Morocco and England, I began my first master’s in Islamic Studies at my alma mater, and also completed another 1-year MA in Medieval Studies at Central European University, Budapest, graduating from both universities in 2015.

Then, thanks to the Ertegun Graduate Scholarship, I was fortunate enough to be able to continue my studies in the Khalili Research Centre, University of Oxford, and earn an MSt degree in Islamic art and archaeology in 2016. Being an Ertegun scholar complemented immensely the benefits of studying at Oxford. To mention but one joyful memory, once when I had to make sense of some particularly difficult bits of Arabic poetry for my research, a colleague in the Ertegun House was willing to read the texts with me in the middle of the night with a friendly smile on his face. The House, as always, provided a splendid and comfortable working place – no wonder that we, Ertegun scholars, all loved it. Yet the greatest gift that I received from the Ertegun Programme was the chance to organise a conference titled Shāla and the Marīnid dynasty: A colloquium on Moroccan history and archaeology in April 2016.