Geoffrey Roper
Dr Geoffrey Roper is an international bibliographical and information consultant, specialising in the Middle East and Muslim world. He was from 1982 to 2003 head of the Islamic Bibliography Unit at the University of Cambridge, and editor of Index Islamicus, the major current comprehensive bibliography and search tool for publications on all aspects of Islam and the Muslim world. He has also been editor of Al-Furqān Foundation’s World Survey of Islamic Manuscripts, Chairman of the Middle East Libraries Committee (MELCOM-UK) and contributor to various reference works. He has researched, written and lectured extensively on bibliography and the history of the book in the Muslim world, has curated exhibitions on the subject at Cambridge University Library and the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, and has been a convener of all three of the previous Symposia on the History of Printing and Publishing in the Languages and Countries of the Middle East (Mainz 2002, Paris 2005, Leipzig 2008). He is a contributor and adviser to the Khatt Foundation (Centre for Arabic Typography), the MuslimHeritage.com project of the Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation (FSTC), and the international Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq Research Project. He is also Associate Editor (Muslim world) of the Oxford Companion to the Book (2010) and Co-Editor of the forthcoming Handbook of the History of Printing in Europe and the Mediterranean (Vienna).