Diane Robinson-Dunn

Degrees

• Ph.D., State University of New York at Stony Brook

Biography

Diane Robinson-Dunn has been a University of Detroit Mercy faculty member since 2001. She is an historian and scholar who specializes in the creation of culture, or systems of meaning, in the context of fluctuating imperial and national borders from northern Europe to the South Asian subcontinent from the early 19th to the mid-20th centuries. Particular areas of interest include England, France, north Africa and the Middle East. Robinson-Dunn received her Ph.D. from Stony Brook University and studied Arabic at the Arabic Language Institute, American University in Cairo. Her first book The Harem, Slavery and British Imperial Culture, was published in English by Manchester University Press in 2006 and 2014 and published in French, Le harem, l’esclavage et la culture impériale britannique: Les relations anglo-musulmanes à la fin du XXe siècle, by Les Presses Pluridisciplinaires de L’Université Grenoble Alpes in 2018. That work explores the national and gender politics surrounding the British antislavery movement in Egypt and new Muslim communities in England during the 1870-1900 period. Her second book An Empire of Many Cultures: Bahá’ís, Muslims, and Jews and the British State 1900-20 was published as part of the “Studies in Imperialism” series by Manchester University Press in 2024. That work contributes to both imperial history and the history of religious minorities in the Middle East. It examines the pivotal processes that would lay the foundations for the development of the Bahá’í faith as a world religion, a new era of Muslim missionary activity in the West and a Jewish state in Palestine.

Other publications include articles and book chapters focusing on historical figures, most notably Lucie Duff Gordon, Abdullah Quilliam and Sultan Jahan, who crossed familiar geographical, cultural and religious boundaries between 'East' and 'West' and French and English Orientalist representations and cultural encounters and exchanges in North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.

Robinson-Dunn is a lifetime member and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, London, a member and contributor to le Groupe de recherche Achac, Paris, and is the faculty leader and director of the university’s international experience in India.