Jan Retsö

Professor of Arabic, University of Gothenburg

Jan Retsö received his Ph.D. from the University of Gothenburg in 1983 for the thesis The Finite Passive
Voice in Modern Arabic Dialects (Orientalia Gothoburgensia 7). He was appointed Professor of Arabic at
the University of Gothenburg in 1986. His publications include the monographs Diathesis in the Semitic
Languages: A Comparative Morphological Study (Leiden 1989; Studies in Semitic Languages and
Linguistics, vol. xiv), 254 pp.; The Arabs in Antiquity: Their History from the Assyrians to the Umayyads
(London/New York: Routledge/Curzon, 2003), 684 pp.

Retsö has been a Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala (spring 2000); a Fellow at
the Institute for Advanced Studies, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2003–04); Professeur invité at the
École normale supérieure lettres et sciences humaines de Lyon (8 January–7 February 2006); and Visiting
Scholar, University of Salford (February–April 2007). He is a member of the Royal Society of Arts and
Sciences (KVVS) in Gothenburg and the Royal Society of Humanities and Sciences (KHVSL) in Lund.

Retsö’s principal field of research is comparative and diachronic studies of the Semitic languages, including
Arabic in all its forms, classical and modern spoken, and the history of pre-Islamic Arabia. His current main
project is entitled ‘The Mountain in the Wilderness: Arab and Israelite Origins’. This project is a continuation
of the monograph published in 2003 and will be pursued at SCAS.

This information is accurate as of the academic year 2014-15.