Kyle Longworth

Kyle Longworth is a Research Fellow at Leiden University's Leiden Institute for Area Studies (LIAS) and a third-year PhD student at the University of Chicago's Department of Near Eastern Studies. His research focuses on religious and communal boundary demarcation in the Near East during Late Antiquity, particularly through the analysis of early Arabic tombstone inscriptions in comparative context with Jewish and Christian epitaphs.

Education: PhD candidate in Islamic History (University of Chicago, expected completion 2025) under the advisement of Fred M. Donner. His work interrogates how script and symbols, rather than doctrinal language, conveyed religious identity in pre-Islamic and early Islamic burial practices.

Research emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches to understanding the socio-religious dynamics of Late Antiquity, challenging assumptions about the absence of distinct religious identity in early Arabic inscriptions. His 2022 paper in Scripts and Scripture argues that the lack of theological content in early Arabic tombstones does not equate to an absence of religious distinctiveness, drawing parallels with contemporary Christian and Jewish burial practices.

Professional affiliations include contributions to conferences like the Scripts and Scripture symposium, and collaborations with scholars such as Ilkka Lindstedt and Aaron Butts. His work bridges archaeology, religious studies, and historical linguistics to reconstruct religious landscapes of early Arabia.