K.M.J. (Karène) Sanchez-Summerer, Prof

Karène Sanchez Summerer is Professor and Chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Groningen, where she also serves as co-director of the Centre for Historical Studies. Her work sits at the intersection of cultural history, language politics, heritage, religion, and diplomacy in the modern Middle East. She joined Groningen in 2022, after more than a decade at Leiden University (as Assistant and Associate Professor).

She holds a PhD from the University of Leiden and a PhD from the university of Sorbonne EPHE, and has led or collaborated on several international and interdisciplinary projects funded by the Dutch, French research councils and the EU, among them an NWO Open Competition (with H. Murre-van den Berg, 2012-2017), a NWO VIDI on European cultural diplomacy and Arab Christianity (2018-2023) and the ANR project Grammars of Preaching (2024–2029). Her research builds on extensive archival work across the Mediterranean and Middle East and engages with connected history approaches to religion, mobility, education, photography, and language.

Karène has held visiting positions and fellowships at leading research institutes including the École française de Rome, the Leibniz Institute for European History in Mainz, IREMAM/Aix-Marseille University, and IFPO. She regularly contributes to international collaborative networks and centres of intra-European and transregional historical studies.

She has directed and co-organised multi-institution projects, scholarly summer and winter schools, archival initiatives, and public humanities programmes. She has supervised numerous postdoctoral researchers and PhDs (including Double-Degree programmes linking Dutch universities with institutions in Italy, Germany, Sweden and Canada) on themes ranging from transnational migration and nationalism to diasporic heritage and missionary diplomacy.

Her publications interrogate entanglements between religion, language, identity, and power in the Levant from the late Ottoman period to the mid-20th century. She is the (co)editor of major volumes on photography in Mandate Palestine, Middle Eastern Christianity, colonial language politics, diplomacy and nationalism.

Beyond academia, Karène is deeply engaged in heritage circulation and public history, curating photographic exhibitions across Europe and the Middle East, organising film and discussion forums, contributing to podcasts, and collaborating with museums and cultural institutions. Her work translates historical research into accessible forms that activate reflection on memory, identity, conflict, and coexistence.

She welcomes enquiries from prospective MA and PhD students interested in cultural diplomacy, language politics, religious history, photography, heritage, or connected histories of the Middle East. Joint supervision arrangements and Double degree PhDs are often possible within her networks, particularly for students with partial independent funding or programme affiliation.

For a complete CV, click here (December 2025)

Language Proficiency: Arabic (Colloquial: Lebanese/ Palestinian) MSA (INALCO, Paris & D. École Biblique et Archéol., Jerusalem), Catalan, Dutch, English, French,  German, Hebrew (INALCO Paris & Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Italian, Spanish