Emir Faruk Kayahan holds a BA in German Studies and Islamic Religious Education and a BA in Islamic Theology from the University of Osnabrück, Germany. He completed a Master's in Islamic Studies and History (2022) and a Master's in Comparative Literature and Critical Translation (2023) at the University of Oxford.
Emir primarily focuses on cross-cultural exchanges in philosophy and literature between the "Orient" and the "Occident." His research centers on 18th-century German Enlightenment discussions of religion by thinkers like Kant, Lessing, Mendelssohn, and Goethe, including both their reception of Islamic thought and literature, and their reception by thinkers in the Islamic world.
As part of his interest in the varied intellectual dialogues between East and West, Emir has conducted extensive philosophical and theological research into the reception of Immanuel Kant's theoretical philosophy in the Muslim world, especially through the work of Ottoman Shaykh al-Islam Mustafa Sabri Efendi (1869-1954). Emir has also explored these dialogues in the other direction, examining the literary and philosophical reception of Andalusian philosopher Ibn Ṭufayl (d. 581/1185) in the German Enlightenment, particularly through the works of Mendelssohn and Lessing.