Corisande Fenwick appointed Director of the Society for Libyan Studies

The Society for Libyan Studies is a British academic body and charitable organisation, and is a British International Research Institute, sponsored by the British Academy, which since 1969 has fostered links between British and North African scholars in a wide range of fields including archaeology, history, geography, the natural sciences and linguistics.

The Society conducts research and training, collaborates with overseas and UK-based partners, and provides financial, academic and logistical support to researchers. Corisande Fenwick, its newly-elected Director, is a leading scholar in North African archaeology. Her research focuses on empire and everyday life in Islamic and late antique North Africa; her recent books include Early Islamic Africa (Bloomsbury) and the co-edited volumes The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Archaeology (OUP) and The Aghlabids and their Neighbours (Brill).

Corisande has worked extensively in Libya, Morocco and Tunisia and currently co-directs four fieldwork projects with Moroccan, Tunisian, British and German colleagues in the region at the UNESCO site of Volubilis and in the Wadi Draa in Morocco, and at Bulla Regia and the Medjerda Valley in Tunisia.

She is PI of the 5-year European Research Council project EVERYDAYISLAM: Cultural Change, Everyday Life and State Formation in early Islamic North Africa and Co-PI of a 3-year AHRC-DFG project ISLAMAFR: Conquest, Ecology and Economy in Islamic North Africa: The Example of the Central Medjerda Valley. She is also Co-I of the 5-year AHRC project OASCIV: The Making of Oasis Civilisation in the Moroccan Sahara.

Corisande has served on the Council of the Society for Libyan Studies since 2014 and as Honorary Secretary since 2016.