Heather J. Sharkey

Heather J. Sharkey is a Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches Middle Eastern and North African history. Before joining Penn’s faculty, she taught at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; MIT; and Trinity College in Connecticut. During the 2024-25 year, she was concurrently an Oliver Smithies Fellow at Balliol College, University of Oxford and a Senior Fellow in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. She was a Visiting Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris during the 2012-13 year. She holds degrees from Yale University (BA), the University of Durham, England (MPhil), and Princeton University (PhD). She has received fellowships including the Marshall, Fulbright-Hays, and Carnegie, and won the Charles Ludwig Distinguished Teaching Award from the College of Arts and Sciences at Penn.