Georges Tamer, professor and M.S. Sofia Chair in Arabic Studies, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, was awarded a 24-month Marie Curie Fellowship in the M4HUMAN (Mobility for experienced researchers in historical humanities and Islamic studies) programme of the German Gerda Henkel Foundation, for his project, The Concept of Time in the Koran. The fellowship is aimed at supporting outstanding scholars.

This funding initiative is co-financed by the European Commission under the EU's Seventh Framework Programme for Research. One objective of this program is to increase networking between researchers in the historical humanities at the international level, including researchers in religious, cultural and political sciences under the special program Islam: the Modern Nation State and Transnational Movements.

Tamer's research deals with various subjects of Arabic and Islamic literature and culture. His particular interests are the Koran and the Arabic literature in the context of Late Antiquity, classical Arabic poetry, medieval Arabic philosophy as well as its reception in modern political philosophy. His other areas of expertise include Islamic thought and Christian- and Judeo-Arabic literature.

Tamer was a 2002-2003 fellow of the Working Group Modernity and Islam at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin and, in 2006, a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Before coming to Ohio State, Tamer taught at the Freie Universität Berlin and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany.