Chase F. Robinson, Distinguished Professor of History, is considered the leading expert of his generation on early Islamic history. From 2003 to 2005, he chaired Oxford University’s faculty of oriental studies, having first served as a professor of Islamic history at Oxford, beginning in 1993. His books include Empire and Elites after the Muslim Conquest (2000); A Medieval Islamic City Reconsidered: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Samarra (2001); and Islamic Historiography (2003).

Several new books are forthcoming in 2009. Robinson has received grants and fellowships from the British Academy, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and the American Research Center in Egypt. He was appointed provost and senior vice president of the Graduate Center in the fall of 2008. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard.

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