Shireen Hamza is an organizer, historian, and artist living in Chicago. They work on the history of medicine and the body, and bring collaborative, embodied and artistic research methods to their work. She teaches in both university and prison contexts, and has learned immensely from students in both. Shireen is an active participant and organizer in the disability dance and contact improvisation communities in Chicago.
Shireen completed her PhD in Harvard’s Department of the History of Science in 2023 and then took up a postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern from 2023-2025. There, she taught courses on the history of medicine and disability and worked on her book project, Environment & Medicine in Medieval Islam. This project draws on Arabic and Persian medical manuscripts from across the western Indian Ocean world to investigate the role of local knowledge, communities and environments in creating a transregional medical tradition. Shireen explores their scholarly interests through sound, moving image, and movement research, for example, through workshops for people to explore the history of humoral medicine through improvised movement and a sound piece about the history of experiential learning in medicine.