Kristina Richardson

John L. Nau III Professor of the History and Principles of Democracy Professor of History and Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures

dwc7rm@virginia.edu

https://history.virginia.edu/people/profile/dwc7rm

Office Address: NAU 295

Education

AB (History) Princeton University 2003
MA (Near Eastern Studies) University of Michigan 2005
PhD (Near Eastern Studies) University of Michigan 2008

Biography

In Fall 2022, Kristina Richardson joined the UVa faculty as the John L. Nau III Professor of the History and Principles of Democracy and as Professor of History and Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures. Her research focuses on premodern non-elite Arab history, particularly people with disabilities, users of sign language, Romani groups (ghurabā’), craftspeople, and enslaved laborers and entertainers. She is the author of two monographs: Difference and Disability in the Medieval Islamic World: Blighted Bodies (Edinburgh, 2012) and Roma in the Medieval Islamic Word: Literacy, Culture and Migration (I.B. Tauris, 2022). For this latest book she was awarded the prestigious 2022 Dan David Prize, the largest history award in the world, and the 2023 Monica H. Green Prize for Distinguished Medieval Research by the Medieval Academy of America. It was also awarded Honorable Mention in the Middle East Medievalists 2023 Book Prize competition.

In 2021 Professor Richardson and Dr. Boris Liebrenz co-published The Notebook of Kamal al-Din the Weaver, an edition and study of an early Ottoman weaver’s Arabic notebook. She is currently writing her third monograph Black Basra: Race, Slavery and Science in Early Islamic History. At its core this book will be a history of the port city of Basra from its founding in 637 until c. 1000 CE, centering the lives and experiences of free and unfree black people (al-sūdān), who were broadly defined at that time as dark-skinned inhabitants of Africa, Asia, and the southern Indian Ocean.

Professor Richardson has been named a 2024-2025 Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar. Her work has also been supported by the National Endowment of the Humanities, the Marie Curie Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the City University of New York. She also serves as an editor for the journal Der Islam.