Project Researcher

Personal Profile

After taking a Master degree in Philosophy (Mag. phil.) at the University of Vienna (1997), graduating as an engineer in Landscape-Planning (Dipl. Ing.) from the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna (1998) and spending two years of research in Cairo (1997-9), Elvira Wakelnig completed her Ph.D. in Islamic Studies (Dr. phil.) at the University of Erlangen (2005).

She was research associate of the Glossarium Graeco-Arabicum-Project (GALex) at the University of Bochum (2005), short-term Frances A. Yates fellow at the Warburg Institute (2006) and held a post-doctoral position at the University of Halle (2006-7).

Since October 2007, she is working at the University of Warwick.

Research

Her main research interest is the transmission of Greek philosophy into Arabic and Arabic philosophy in the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries. Her current project at Warwick (funded by the AHRC) is to edit, translate and comment on the untitled and anonymously transmitted philosophical compendium preserved in MS Bodleian, Marsh 539 (for more information, click here).

Publications

Monograph

• Feder, Tafel, Mensch. Al-ʽĀmirīs Kitāb al-Fuṣūl fī l-Maʽālim al-ilāhīya und die arabische Proklos-Rezeption im 10. Jh. Text, Übersetzung und Kommentar, Leiden: Brill 2006, 441 pp.

Articles

• “A New Version of Miskawayh's Book of Triumph: An Alternative Recension of al-Fawz al-aṣghar or the lost Fawz al-akbar?” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 19.1 (2009), 83–119.
  
• “Philosophical Fragments of al-ʽĀmirī preserved mainly in al-Tawḥīdī, Miskawayh and in the texts of the Ṣiwān al-Ḥikma tradition”, in P. Adamson (ed.): In the Age of al-Farabi: Arabic Philosophy in the
  4th/10th Century (Warburg Institute Colloquia), London: Warburg Institute, 2008, pp. 215-238.
• “Al-ʽAmirī on Vision and the Visible. Variations on traditional visual theories”, in A. Akasoy/W. Raven (ed.): Islamic Thought in the Middle Ages. Studies in Text, Transmission and Translation, in Honour of Hans Daiber, Leiden: Brill 2008, pp. 413-430.
• “Metaphysics in al-ʽĀmirī. The hierarchy of being and the concept of creation”, in Medioevo 32 (2007), pp. 39-59.
• “Al-ʽĀmirī’s paraphrase of the Proclean ‘Elements of Theology’. A search for possible sources and parallel texts”, in C. D’Ancona (ed.): The Libraries of the Neoplatonists, Leiden: Brill 2007, pp. 457-469. 

Encyclopaedia Articles

• “The Arabic Proclus”, “al-ʽĀmirī”, “Miskawayh” in H. Lagerlund (ed.): Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy, Heidelberg: Springer, (submitted). 
• “al-ʽĀmirī” in U. Rudolph (ed.): Philosophie in der islamischen Welt – Bd. 1: 8. -10. Jh., Basel: Schwabe & Co (= Grundriß der Geschichte der Philosophie. Begründet v. F. Überweg, völlig neubearbeitete Ausgabe), (submitted).

Contributions

• A Greek and Arabic Lexicon: materials for a dictionary of the medieval translations from Greek into Arabic, fasc. 8: b-bdl, ed. by G. Endreß and D. Gutas, Leiden: Brill, 2006.
• A Greek and Arabic Lexicon: materials for a dictionary of the medieval translations from Greek into Arabic, fasc. 9, ed. by G. Endreß and D. Gutas, Leiden: Brill, (in preparation).