Ilona Stricof '11, Ph.D.

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The first TEDx Talk by Ilona (Gerbakher) Stricof '11, Ph.D., was just published on YouTube.

"The talk, 'Bodies and Souls on the Road: An Abbasidist in Guangzhou,' tells the story of how my family moved to Guangzhou, China — based on a coin flip — and how that journey led me to see the city's extraordinary 1,300-year history as a global meeting point between the Arab world and China," Stricof said.

"As a historian of the Islamic Golden Age," she continued, "I found myself living inside the history I had spent my career studying, and the talk weaves together medieval scholarship, personal adventure, and a central idea: that the cities and people who connect worlds are often more important than the worlds themselves."

Stricof earned her B.A. degree, magna cum laude, in Middle Eastern and North African studies and this year earned her Ph.D. from Columbia University.