Unit for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Societies

MA Mohamed Ilyes Mechentel

Research Associate specialized in Digital Humanities and Islamic Studies

Department Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies

E-Mail
mohamed.mechentel@unibe.ch
Office
S126
Postal Address
University of Bern
Department Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies (SACS)
Unit for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Societies (MOMuG)
Lerchenweg 36
3012 Bern
Consultation Hour
by arrangement via email

Academic career

Since February 2025 : Research Associate as Digital Humanities expert in Islamic Studies at MOMuG, University of Bern 

2024 – 2022: MA in Digital Technologies Applied to History, École nationale des chartes

Apr. – Aug. 2024: Internship at the Louvre Museum, applying Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) to 19th-century sources 

Sept. – Dec. 2023:  Internship for the CallFront Project at the Institut national d’histoire des arts (INHA), focusing on scriptural data from the Islamic world

July 2023: Internship at Bibliothèque universitaire des langues et civilisations (BULAC), working with digital tools for Arabic text processing and edition 

Current research

Currently, Mohamed Ilyes Mechentel is working at MOMuG as an expert for Digital Humanities in Islamic Studies supporting three research projects:

  • SNSF Starting Grant Tracing Labour in Islamicate Legal Traditions (TraIL) (PI Prof. Dr Serena Tolino)
  • SNSF Starting Grant Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean Mathematics (MediMath) (PI Ass. Prof. Dr Eleonora Sammarchi)
  • The Flow (PIs University of Bern: Prof. Dr Tobias Hodel, Prof. Dr Serena Tolino) 

Research interests

  • HTR on Arabic script 
  • Digital Humanities in Islamic Studies