Academic Bio
Pelle Valentin Olsen joined NELC as a PhD student in 2014. He holds degrees from the University of Oxford and the University of Copenhagen. He lived and studied Arabic in Syria and Lebanon. Working on Iraqi cultural history, Pelle’s work examines the history of leisure, education, sexuality, and masculinity in Hashemite Iraq. He is also interested in Iraqi poetry and prose.
In addition to several book reviews, he has published in the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies. He regularly presents at conferences in Europe and North America. In 2016-17 he taught Arabic as a lecturer at the University of Chicago. He was a Fulbright Fellow in 2014 and has received research fellowships from The Nicholson Center for British Studies, The Center Jewish Studies, UChicago Urban Studies, The Danish Institute in Damascus, St. Antony’s College Oxford, and AUB. In 2016 he was a UChicago Urban Doctoral Fellow.