Silvia Naef

Biography

Silvia Naef’s research focuses on modern art, visual representations and images as well as gender issues in the Arab and Muslim worlds. She is a full professor at the Arabic Studies Section (2006–present), and director of the master’s programme in Middle Eastern Studies (MAMO) at the Global Studies Institute of the University of Geneva.

She was a visiting professor at the University of Toronto (2007–2009), University of Sassari, Italy (2012), École Normale Supérieure, Paris (2016) and Saint Joseph University of Beirut (2017), and a research fellow in Göttingen (2013) and Princeton (2003). She is one of the founding members of Manazir, the Swiss Platform for the Study of Visual Art, Architecture and Heritage in the MENA Region, as well as Manazir Journal. She is a board member of the Swiss Asia Society.

Her publications include Other Modernities: Art, Visual Culture and Patrimony Outside the West (Artl@s Bulletin 9, 1, 2020); The Arab Apocalypse: Art, Abstraction & Activism in the Middle East, Manazir Journal 1 (2019); Visual Modernity in the Arab World, Turkey and Iran: Reintroducing the ‘Missing Modern’ (Asiatische Studien/Etudes Asiatiques, 2016); and The Other Shiites: From The Mediterranean to Central Asia (Peter Lang, 2007).

Naef obtained a PhD from the Faculty of Humanities, University of Geneva, with a thesis on modern art in the Arab world (1993).

Born in 1959 in Trieste, Italy, Naef currently lives and works in Geneva.

SAF Participation:
Sharjah Film Platform 4 (2021)