Advisor: Professor Claire Fanger

Mai Lootah holds a master’s degree in Cultural Astronomy from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. Her master's dissertation titled "Cosmic Chaos in Islamic Apocalyptic Eschatology" was shortlisted for the 2018 Master's in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology Alumni Association Dissertation Prize and was also published in the edited volume “Skylights: Essays in the History and Contemporary Culture of Astrology.” For her Ph.D. dissertation, Mai is conducting comprehensive archival research in Europe and Turkey. Her research focuses on examining the reactions to the appearance of comets in the seventeenth century. Mai’s investigation follows the continental routes taken by the correspondences of the “Republic of Letters,” which was a network of rich cultural and intellectual exchanges among intellectuals, philosophers, and scientists of the era via correspondence. Mai aims to study the intersections of science and religion as presented in the cosmologies of Ottoman and European writers across geographical and national boundaries.

Mai’s broader research interests include the history of science, Islamic philosophical thought, Islamic art, Sufism, mysticism, and linguistics. She is proficient in Classical languages, such as Greek, Latin, and Arabic, and is currently studying modern and Ottoman Turkish. Her current translation projects involve the translation of several texts on medieval and early modern cosmology and astrology from Latin and Ottoman Turkish into English.