Maribel Fierro

Maribel Fierro is a Research Professor at the Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas del Mediterráneo y Oriente Próximo, part of the Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales (CCHS) at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) in Madrid, Spain. She has held this position since 2005 and previously served as a Scientific Researcher at the Department of Arabic Studies, Institute of Philology, CSIC from 1992 to 2005. Fierro has held visiting positions at prestigious institutions including the University of Chicago (2011), Stanford University (2002), and research fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Her educational background includes:

• Semitic Philology studies at Universidad Complutense Madrid (1974-1979)
• Research scholarship at SOAS, London (1982-1983)
• Doctorate in Semitic Philology from Universidad Complutense Madrid (1985)

Professor Fierro's research spans the history of the Medieval Islamic West (8th-15th centuries), with special focus on al-Andalus, Islamic law, heresy and orthodoxy, violence in Islamic societies, gender and law, religious beliefs and practices, emotions in Islam, and political and religious legitimacy. Her work bridges historical methodology with legal studies, gender studies, and cultural anthropology to examine complex dynamics of pre-modern Islamic societies.

Her recent publications demonstrate a consistent focus on intellectual and political history of Islamic societies in the Western Mediterranean, examining religious authority, legal interpretation, and cultural exchange. Fierro's scholarship often explores how knowledge produced in the Islamic West spread in wider Islamic contexts, as evidenced by her ERC Advanced Research Grant project (2009-2014) on 'Knowledge, heresy and political culture in the Islamic West.'

Her notable scientific achievements include:

• R. Stephen Humphreys Distinguished Scholar award from UC Santa Barbara Center for Middle East Studies (2014)
• Waldo G. Leland Prize from the American Historical Association (2011) for editing volume II of The New Cambridge History of Islam

Fierro has directed significant research projects, served on numerous academic committees, and participated in peer review activities for universities worldwide including Haifa, Chicago, Princeton, Yale, and others. She has edited multiple prestigious journals including Der Islam and Intellectual History of the Islamicate World, and serves on editorial boards for several book series. As Director of the research group 'Historia cultural de Mediterráneo' at CSIC, she leads projects examining cultural and intellectual history of the Mediterranean region with particular attention to knowledge transmission between the Islamic West and broader Islamic scholarly communities.