Dr. Mark Dickens won Killam Post-doctoral fellowship in the Religious Studies Program

Dr. Mark Dickens of Cambridge University has won a Killam Post-doctoral fellowship in the Religious Studies Program. His research project will be: "A History of Christianity in Central Asia, 200-1400 CE." His supervisor will be Professor Willi Braun. Dr. Dickens' doctoral dissertation, Turk?y?: Turkic Peoples in Syriac Literature prior to the Seljüks, examined how Turkic peoples in both Central Asia and the Middle East were presented and perceived in published Syriac literature between the appearance of the Turks in world history in the mid-6th century and the Seljük invasion of the Middle East in the mid-11th century. It received the Leigh Douglas Memorial Prize for the best PhD dissertation on a Middle Eastern topic (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, 2009) and an Honorable Mention for the Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award (Middle East Studies Association, 2008)