Professor Dionisius A. Agius FBA
PhD 1984, University of Toronto
Extension: 5257
Telephone: 01392 725257
Al Qasimi Professor of Arabic Studies and Islamic Material Culture
Professor Dionisius A. Agius is best known for his work on Islamic material culture, maritime ethnography and Arabic language and linguistics. He is particularly interested in the history and provenance of tradtional wooden vessels and their construction, the crew, folklore history, resources and trade in the Western Indian Ocean. In the past he has conducted ethnographical fieldwork among seafaring communities on the coasts of the Arabian Gulf States and the Dhofar region of Oman as part of a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (1996 to 1998). Similar fieldwork has been conducted on the Egyptian and Sudanese Red Sea littoral (2001-2004) and the Saudi coast (2007). As principal investigator of an Arts & Humanities Research Council project (2002-2005) he led a team working on paper fragments and coinage (12th–15th c) at Quseir al-Qadim on the Egyptian Red Sea coast. He has also researched on the Arabic of Islamic Sicily and Malta and varied topics in Arabic linguistics. He is general editor and founder of Al-Masāq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean (est. 1988). He presently holds a major grant (2008-2011) funded by the Golden Web Foundation for a project entitled MARES: Maritime Ethnography of the Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea: People, Trade and Pilgrimage and is Director and Principal Investigator of the project www.ex.ac.uk/mares
Major Book Prize
Awarded one of the most significant and prestigious major awards by the Abdullah Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah Foundation and the British-Kuwait Friendship Society for the best scholarly work on the Middle East for Seafaring in the Arabian Gulf and Oman: People of the Dhow (London:Kegan Paul Ltd, 2005; paperback, London:Routledge, 2009)
Other book prizes
Classic Ships of Islam: From Mesopotamia to the Indian Ocean (Leiden:E.J.Brill, 2008) was recently given two awards: The Keith Matthews Award of the Canadian Nautical Research Society in 2008; and the Keith Muckelroy Award of the Nautical Archaeology Society in 2009.
