Professor Alastair Hamilton, ST Lee Visiting Professorial Fellow (December 2002 to June 2003)
Professor of the History of Ideas, Alastair Hamilton's research project while in the School focuses on a study on the relations between the Egyptians Copts and Europe from the Council of Florence (1438-45) until the French occupation of Egypt at the end of the eighteenth century. The project will allow Professor Hamilton to further his own research into the history of Arabic studies in Europe and his awareness of the immense and enduring importance of the Arabic-speaking Christians in relations between Europe and the Arab world.
The underlying theme of his book will be the misunderstandings to which the Coptic Church, like the other Christian churches of the East and indeed, like Islam, was subjected in Europe. Distorted by European prejudices, both positive and negative, the Coptic Church tended to be drawn into western confessional controversy, forced to answer dogmatic questions to which the Copts had never devoted any great attention.
Professor Hamilton gave a lecture on 12 March 2003 : `Europe and the Copts of Egypt’and also took part in the Dean's Seminar Series on 30 April 2003: `The Quran in Seventeenth-Century France'
In 2003, Professor Hamilton was appointed Arcadian Visiting Research Professor of the School and currently teaches Early modern intellectual and religious history at the Warburg Institute.
