Kurt Werthmuller

Kurt Werthmuller

Supervisory Policy Analyst

Kurt Werthmuller is a Supervisory Policy Analyst at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom with a particular emphasis on religious freedom in Egypt and the Levant. Prior to joining USCIRF, he was an Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the American University in Dubai, where he taught medieval and modern Middle Eastern history as well as regional politics and culture. His academic work has focused on the historical relationships of regional non-Muslim communities to wider Muslim-majority state and society in Egypt and the Levant, which he examined in his book, Coptic Identity and Ayyubid Politics in Egypt, 1218-1250 (American University in Cairo Press, 2010). He is also the author of many short-form scholarly works on regional topics, including a series of historical entries for Oxford University’s Dictionary of African Biography (2011), and he received a Fulbright-Hays fellowship to conduct dissertation research in Cairo, Egypt in 2004-2005.

Dr. Werthmuller previously worked as a senior analyst with CyberPoint International (Abu Dhabi, UAE), as a research fellow with Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, as Associate Professor of History at Azusa Pacific University (CA), and as Assistant Professor of History at Geneva College (PA). He received a Ph.D. in Islamic & Middle Eastern History from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University.