Select Unpublished Lectures and Papers
“Muslim Futures: Science Fiction, Islam and the Making of Ethnoreligious Futurity,” American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, Boston, November 2017
““A Beau Ideal for Whosoever Hopes for God”: Piety, Medicine, and Prophetics in the Medieval and Contemporary Middle East,” American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, Boston, November 2017
“Making Local Medicine: Colonial Discourses and the Making of Modern Medicine in the Middle East,” Middle Eastern Studies Association Annual Meeting, Washington D.C., 2017.
“Islam, Science and History in the Making of a Postcolony,” in Roundtable: Rethinking Histories of Science and Medicine: Beyond Eurocentrism and Postcolonialism, History of Science Society Annual Meeting, November 2017.
“Prophetic Medicine: Medical Piety in the Medieval and Modern Islamicate Societies,” Keynote address, North American Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies, Boston, September 2017.
“‘Eliminate the Muslim’: Science Fiction in the Making of Muslims as Future Subjects,” The Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Study of Science, Boston, August 2017.
“Names to Remember: Memory and Amnesia in Medicine’s Historical Epistemology,” Keynote Address, Medicine and Knowledge in the Middle East Workshop, City of New York University—Graduate Center, March 31st, 2016
“How to be a Patient: Patienthood and Medical Thinking in the Medieval Islamicate World,” Yale Lectures in Medieval Studies, November 5th, 2015
“In the Search of a Good Story: Origins and Continuities in Writing the History of Science,” Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Minnesota, October 15th, 2015
“From Plague to Ebola: The Social Life of Epidemics and the Making of Global Health,” The Annual Da Vinci Lecture, Marshall University, November 7th, 2014
“A House for the Sick and Poor: Hospitals, Religion, and Charity in a Topography of Public Health,” Keynote address at “Religion as a Social Determinant of Public Health” conference, Emory University, November 6th, 2014
“Beyond Conflict and Harmony: Religion and Science in the Twenty-First Century” at Cleveland City Club, March 7th, 2014
“Knowledge Will Set You Free: Critique as an Ethic of Liberation,” Keynote address at Harvard Divinity School Diversity and Exploration Program, November 2013
“Religion and Global Health” at Harvard Global Health Institute, October, 2013
“Scientific Expertise and Islamic Legal Opinions” at STS-IGLP workshop on expertise in Science, Technology and Law, Harvard Kennedy School STS program, Harvard Law School, April 18-19, 2013
“Hospitals as Road Posts in an Urban Map” at Urbanism, Spirituality and Wellbeing Initiative Panel “Themes in History”, Harvard University, April 11, 2013
“Animals for People and People for Animals: Animals in Medieval and Early Modern Islamicate Sciences” at “Communities like You: Animals in Islam;” the Fifth Annual Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Islamic Studies Conference at Harvard University, April 5-6, 2013
“‘So We May Learn from Our Predecessors’: Medical Biographies and the Arrangement of the Medical Community in the Medieval Middle East” at the annual conference of the History of Science Society, San Diego, November 2012
“Reading an Islamicate Hospital: Charity, Medicine and Tradition in Liminal Spaces” at Alwaleed bin Talal Islamic Studies Program Faculty Seminar, Harvard University, September 2012
“Between Text(s) and Practice(s): Islamic Prophetic Medicine in Scientific and Religious Knowledge Regimes” the annual Isthmus lecture presented to the Isthmus Society of Science and Religion, University of Wisconsin-Madison, April 2012
“‘Disciplining and Persuading’: Science, Religion and the Making of Knowledge” the Inaugural Lecture of the Richard T. Watson Professorship of Science and Religion at Harvard University, Harvard Divinity School, March 2012
“Moving Sexes and Shifting Genders: Medicine, Religion and Law in the Making of Medieval Islamicate Bodies” invited lecture, Wesleyan University, February 2012
“Bodies in Transformation: Castration and Castrates in Medieval Islamic Society” presented at the Annual Conference of the American Academy of Religion-Queer Studies in Religion Group, San Francisco, November 2011
“Reiteration and representation: Asbab al-Nuzul & the Discursive Formation of the Quranic Narrative” presented at the Seventh Biannual Conference on the Qurʾān (The Qurʾān: Text, Society and Culture) at the School of Oriental and African Studies SOAS, London, November 2011
“Laws, Ethics and (Hi)Stories from Distant Lands: Islamic Law and the Making of the Medical Profession in the Medieval Middle East” presented at the conference “Global Perspectives on the History of Chinese Legal Medicine,” University of Michigan Ann-Arbor, October 2011
“The Question of Anatomy: Towards a Different Understanding of the Interactions of Religion and Science in the Medieval Middle East”, presented at the Annual Conference of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), Boston, November 2009
“Prophets of Medicine and Medicine of the Prophet: Debates on Medical Theory and Practice in the Medieval Middle East,” lecture for Harvard University Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Harvard Society of Arab Students, Harvard University, November 2009
“The Traveling Physician: Medicine in Travel Literature About Ottoman Egypt,” presented at the Biannual Conference of the European Association for History of Medicine, Heidelberg, September 2009
“Bīmāristān al-Manṣūrī: State, Religion and Medical Practice in Egypt 1285-1382,” presented at the 23rd International Conference of History of Science and Technology, Budapest, July 2009.
“Notes on Epistemological Debates in the Medieval Middle Eastern Science and Philosophy,” lecture for Early Science Working Group, the Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, April 2009
“On Methodology: New Approaches to the Study of Medieval Islamic Hospitals,” presented at The Meeting of the Three Societies, Oxford, July 2008
“How to Write the History of Medieval Islamic Hospitals?” keynote lecture at the celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the Institute for History, Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, March 2008.
Ahmed Ragab 