Matthew Melvin-Koushki

Dr. Matthew Melvin-Koushki is Associate Professor and McCausland Fellow of History at the University of South Carolina. He specializes in early modern Islamicate intellectual and imperial history, with a philological focus on the theory and practice of the occult sciences in Timurid-Safavid Iran and the broader Persianate world to the nineteenth century, and a disciplinary focus on history of science, history of philosophy and history of the book. His several forthcoming books include The Occult Science of Empire in Aqquyunlu-Safavid Iran: Two Shirazi Lettrists and Their Manuals of Magic, and he is co-editor of the volumes Islamicate Occultism: New Perspectives (2017) and Islamicate Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice (2020). He is also cofounder of the international working group Islamic Occult Studies on the Rise (IOSOTR), which showcases the newest work in this now burgeoning interdisciplinary field.