Dr. Flora Vafea

Research Associate

Short Curriculum Vitae

• Ph.D. Epistemology and History of Sciences and Technology, University Paris 7 – Denis Diderot (Dec. 2006). Mention: «très honorable avec félicitations»

• M.Sc. History of Sciences, Cairo University (Dec. 1998). Scholarship by the Egyptian Government.

• Degree in Mathematics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Mar. 1981). Grade: “very good”. Scholarship by the Greek Foundation of Scholarships.

• Lecturer, Faculty of Languages and Translation, al-Azhar University, Cairo (Dec. 2016- present).

• Visiting fellow, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften in Munich, (Aug.- Nov. 2014) for the project Ptolemaeus Arabus et Latinus: Glossary of Ptolemaic terms.

• Mathematics teacher, Abet Greek School in Cairo (1997-2002, 2007-2014, 2015-2016).

• Mathematics teacher, Kontomichalios Greek School in Khartoum (2006-2007).

• Mathematics teacher of the Greek Ministry of Education in the Secondary Education (Apr. 1988 - Oct. 2011).

• Mathematics teacher in private schools in Piraeus, Greece (Sep. 1981 - Apr. 1988).

Selected Publications

• “Al-Bīrūnī: The plate of the eclipses”, Suhayl 15(2017), pp. 297-354.
• “From the celestial globe to the astrolabe: Transferring the celestial motion onto the plane of the astrolabe” in “Astrolabes in Medieval Cultures”, Medieval Encounters 23 (2017), Brill, pp. 124-148.
• “The astronomical instruments in Saint Catherine’s iconography at the Holy Monastery of Sinai”, in “Science and Orthodox Christianity”, Almagest, International Journal for the History of Scientific Ideas 8/2 (2017), Brepols, pp. 84-109.
• “Sirius’ (al-‘Abūr) proper motion as recorded in the Arabic Star Mythology”, in The Materiality or the Sky - proceedings of SEAC 2014 – Malta, Sophia Centre Press, 2016.
• “Two Editions of the Earliest Text on the Astrolabe”, Book Review in Journal for the History of Astronomy 47, 4 (2016) pp. 449-451, (with Petra G. Schmidl).
• “ʻAbd al-Raḥman al-Ṣūfī: Study of the lunar and solar eclipses with the astrolabe”, in I.M. Vandoulakis, Liu Dun (eds), Navigating Across Mathematical Cultures and Times, World Scientific Publishing Co, 2018 (forthcoming).
• The gears of the Antikythera Mechanism: an educational pathfinder to the solar system, Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union, v5 nS260 (2009), Mousas X. et al.
• Les traités d'al-Ṣūfī sur l'astrolabe [Microforme] - Lille : Atelier national de Reproduction des Thèses, 2009 [PhD Thesis].
• “The astrolabe, representation of the celestial sphere onto the plane”, in Ancient Greek Technology, edited by the Technical Chamber of Greece, Athens, 2006.
• “The Mathematics of Pyramid Construction in Ancient Egypt” in Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry 2, 1, June 2002.
• M.Sc. Thesis: “Topics in Ancient Egyptian Mathematics”, Cairo, 1998.