Dr Farouk Yahya is Research Associate in the Department of History of Art and Archaeology, School of Arts, SOAS University of London. His research interests include Islamic arts of the book, as well as texts and images relating to magic and divination, particularly in Southeast Asia.
He was previously Leverhulme Research Assistant–Islamic Art and Culture at the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, where he assisted with the exhibition “Power and Protection: Islamic Art and the Supernatural” (2016–2017) and curated the display “The Tale of Prince Vessantara” (2018).
His book Magic and Divination in Malay Illustrated Manuscripts (Leiden: Brill, 2016) was published thanks to the support of a Publication Grant from the Barakat Trust. Dr Yahya also edited The Arts of Southeast Asia from the SOAS Collections (Penang: Areca Books, 2017) and was co-editor of Islamicate Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice (Leiden: Brill, 2021).
