Rate My Professor Jan Loop

Jan Loop is Professor of Early Modern History and Religious Cultures at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, a position held since August 2020. He concurrently serves as Senior Research Fellow at New York University Abu Dhabi since 2016 and Principal Investigator of the ERC Synergy Project 'The European Qur’an: Islamic Scripture in European Religion and Culture' (2019-2025), funded with €10 million over six years. This project examines the place of the Qur’an in European cultural and religious history from approximately 1150 to 1850, including its interpretation, adaptation, and use in Christian contexts often interacting with the Islamic world. Loop's teaching and research center on the intellectual, religious, and cultural history of Europe and the Near East, with particular emphasis on Western engagements with the Arab, Ottoman, and Persian worlds between 1450 and 1800. His interests encompass hermeneutics, Oriental studies, Arabic studies, Qur’anic studies, history of ideas, Reformation, and religious encounters.

Loop obtained his Licentiate (equivalent to BA/MA) in German Literature, Philosophy, and Islamic Studies from the University of Berne (1994-2001), followed by a PhD from the same institution (2001-2004). He pursued Arabic studies in Damascus, Syria, in 1996 through the Goethe-Institut and the University of Damascus intensive program, and earned a Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education from the University of Kent (2012-2014). His career trajectory includes Professor of Early Modern Global History at the University of Kent (2019-2020), Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Early Modern Global History there (2012-2019), Principal Investigator of the HERA-funded 'Encounters with the Orient in Early Modern European Scholarship' (2013-2016), founding member and academic coordinator of the Centre for the History of Arabic Studies in Europe at the Warburg Institute (2011-2014), Long-term Frances A. Yates Research Fellow at the Warburg Institute (2008-2011), and Fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation (2006-2008). Loop authored Auslegungskulturen, a comparative study of Christian and Islamic hermeneutic concepts (2003), and Johann Heinrich Hottinger: Arabic and Islamic Studies in the Seventeenth Century (2013). He co-edited The Teaching and Learning of Arabic in Early Modern Europe (Brill, 2017) and serves as general editor of Brill's 'History of Oriental Studies' series. Recent works include editing Le Coran européen (2025) and contributions such as 'Hiob Ludolf, the Qur’an, and the History of Writing' (2024). His scholarship has shaped understandings of early modern Orientalism and cross-cultural religious interactions.