Profil

Shahrzad Irannejad ist Postdoktorandin und Koordinatorin an der neu gegründeten Avicenna-Forschungsstelle (ASC) bei RUB:AI. Als Forscherin auf dem Gebiet der Medizingeschichte innerhalb der mittelalterlichen islamischen Tradition widmet sie sich insbesondere dem Werk Avicennas. In ihrem Dissertationsprojekt „Localization of the Avicennan inner senses in the Galenic Brain“ untersuchte sie, wie sich an der Schnittstelle von Medizin und Philosophie Konzepte (des Gehirns und der Seele) wandelten, während sie – über sprachliche und kulturelle Grenzen hinweg – von der griechischen in die mittelalterliche arabische Tradition übergingen. Im Rahmen ihrer Auseinandersetzung mit den Mechanismen des textlichen Wissenstransfers in der mittelalterlichen islamischen Welt legt sie zudem großen Wert auf die Berücksichtigung kodikologischer Aspekte der materiellen Medien, die diesem Wissenstransfer zugrunde lagen. Sie hat diverse Artikel und Buchkapitel zur Begriffsgeschichte (von Seele und Körper) sowie zu den Verflechtungen von Medizin und Kochkunst veröffentlicht.

Forschungsinteressen

Geschichte der humoralen/temperamentalen Medizin, avicennische Psychologie, galenische Anatomie und Physiologie, Metapherntheorie, historische Semantik, historische Ernährungspraktiken

Publikationen

Irannejad SH, Alimi K. “Persian Cuisine and its Entanglements with Greco-Arabic Medicine”. In: ed. Zanotta, Repishti, Miola and Casucci, Entangled Food Histories: Methods and Sources for Exploring Foodways across Millennia, Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2025.

Irannejad SH, Milenković A. “Of Organs, Functions and Body Concepts: Localisation in Empedocles and Nemesius”. In: Living Bodies, Dead Bodies and the Cosmos: Culturally Specific and Universal Concepts.  Chiara Ferella, Ulrike Steinert (eds.). Mohr Siebeck (Tübingen) in the series “Culture of Science and Knowledge”, 2024, 91-116

Irannejad SH. “The History of Medicinal Plants in Traditional Persian Medicine.” In Therapeutic Medicinal Plants in Traditional Persian Medicine, by Roja Rahimi and Roodabeh Bahramsoltani, 6–12, 1st ed. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2024.

Irannejad SH, "Making Sense of Aristotle’s [Anonymous] Appearance in Avicenna’s Anatomy of the Brain”, AKAN BAND. (2019) 29: 123-140.

Vorträge (Auswahl)

“Visual mouvance of the anatomical diagrams in Rhazes’s Kitāb al-Manṣūrī fi’ṭ-Ṭibb”, at the conference: Technical Knowledge in Human History: Text, Image and Re-creation, Pisa, 24.11.2025.

“Cardiocentrism and Encephalocentrism in Aristotle and Galen and their Reflection in Avicenna”, Meeting of the Avicennan Thought Working Group at The Iranian Academy of Medical Sciences, Tehran, 10.07.2024.

“Dissecting the tension between medicine and (natural) philosophy in Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine”, Cultures of Medieval Medicine in an Interdisciplinary Perspective, Bonn, 30.11.2023.

“Greco-Arabic Medicine in Classic Persian Cuisine”, Winter School: Entangled food histories - Mobility in food cultures from ancient history to contemporary times, Pavia, 15.12.2022.

“Brain Ventricles: from Text to Diagram (and back?)”, at the hybrid conference: The Medical Paratext, 08.10.2022, Glasgow/Online. 

“A Metaphor for Contagion in Qusṭā ibn Lūqā’s Book on Contagion”, 40th Annual Meeting of the Working Group “Marburger Gespräche zur Alten Heilkunde”, 18.06.2022, Marburg.

“Of Names, Descriptions and Labels: brain anatomy in the Greco-Arabic medical tradition”, Logos+ Colloquium, 22.04.2022, Lucerne/Online.

“Metaphors and the faculties of the soul: The Inner Senses in Dānešnāme-ye ʿAlāʾī”, hybrid conference Philosophical Anthropology in Ibn Sina”, Iranian Research Institute of Philosophy, 07.02.2022, Tehran/Online.

“Traditional (?) Iranian (?) Medicine: local responses to a global trend”, in panel Ties That (Un)Bind: The Performativity of Tradition in Knowledge Practices of “Connecting Themes Conference”, 17.08.2021, Berlin. 

"Contagion and Faith: between Prophetic Medicine and Science" online conference “Faith, Religion and Medicine“, September 2021, Leuven/online.

“Contagion Metaphor in Qusta bin Luqa”, Webinar “Science, Society and History in the Corona Pandemic”, History and Philosophy Group at the Research Center for Philosophy and History of Science, 19.07.2021, Tehran/Online.

“Avicenna’s Inner Senses and their Ventricular Localization in the summae” at the Third International Meeting of the Avicenna Study Group, 29.06.2021, Trier/Online.

“Bodiless Heads 2: bodies, borders, flux and fluidity” Lecture-Performance with Setareh Fatehi Irani, as part of the lecture series “Human, Medicine and Society: Past, Present and Future Encounters” at the Orient-Institut Istanbul, 22.01.2020, Istanbul, Turkey.

“From Localization of Functions to Embodiment of Concepts”, with Aleksandar Milenković, RTG1876 International Conference Concepts of Humans and Nature between Specificity and Universality, July 15-17, 2019, Mainz, Germany.

“Reception of Ancient Knowledge of the Brain in the Arabic Tradition” at the “Ancient Science Conference”, 12th to 15th of February 2018, London, The United Kingdom.

“Translation, Transmission, Transformation: Diachronic Development of Brain Anatomy in Greco-Arabic Medicine” at the Genealogies of Knowledge Conference “Translating Political and Scientific Thought across Time and Space”, 7-9 December 2017, Manchester, The United Kingdom.

"The Brain in Avicenna's Canon of Medicine" at the conference The Medieval Brain, March 9-11, 2017, University of York, York, The United Kingdom.

“Cuisine as a mirror for the state of medicine in Qajar Iran”. The 16th Conference of the International Qajar Studies Association: Doctors and the Medicinal Arts in Qajar Iran, August 8-9, 2016, Vienna, Austria.