Heather Hughes

Heather manages Penn’s Middle Eastern Studies Collections, providing research and teaching support for Middle Eastern studies, and continuing the development of our distinctive collections in these areas.

Heather came to Penn from the University of California at Santa Barbara, where she was the Librarian for Middle East Studies & Comparative Literature & Global Studies. Previously, she served as an archivist at the Hoover Institution and a library specialist at the University of Texas, and has extensive experience with research collections, archives, and special collections in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. She has also lived in Turkey working as a researcher on the Syrian refugee crisis.

She holds a BA in French from Smith College, an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Washington, and an MS in Information Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. She won the Lesley M. Wilkins Education Award from Mela in 2018.