Professor Kais M. Firro, a prominent researcher and historian, was born in Isfiya in 1944.
Professor Firro completed his PhD studies in France in 1980 on the topic: The Economic Relations between the City of Marseille and the Middle East from 1861 to 1914.
He then worked as a lecturer and academic researcher in the Department of Middle Eastern History at the University of Haifa, where he served as its head for three years and advanced through academic ranks until he achieved the rank of Chair Professor.
Professor Firro held several academic positions both within and outside the university and participated in more than sixty scientific conferences inside and outside the country.
Oxford Fellowship
He received numerous scientific awards, most notably the academic fellowship from the University of Oxford for the year 1995/1996. Until 1992, his historical research focused on economic history, before shifting to cultural studies, ethnic groups, and the study of the philosophy of history.
He published six books and dozens of academic articles in foreign languages, covering the following fields: economic history, the emergence of nationalist thought and its discourses, and their impact on the sectarian issue in Lebanon and Syria.
He also oversaw the management of the Palestinian History Division at the Mada al-Carmel - Arab Center for Applied Social Research.
Key Publications
His book published in 1992 won the “Landau” Prize for the best book published that year. In 2003, the academic journal BJMES nominated his book, “Inventing Lebanon,” published in 2003, for the prize for the best book published in England in the field of Middle Eastern studies, reaching the final shortlist of the five best books in this field.
Professor Firro wrote his first books in the Arabic language on historical knowledge: philosophical, scientific, and literary approaches, addressing the cognitive and methodological development of contemporary historical writing.
In 2010, his name was included in a book published in Cambridge, presenting brief biographies of two thousand of the most prominent intellectuals of the twenty-first century.
Professor Firro passed away in 2019 at the age of 75, leaving behind a legacy of dozens of studies, books, and research in history and political science.
