Marilyn Booth is Professor Emerita at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. She was holder through 2023 of an endowed chair in contemporary Arab studies, and previously held a chair in Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Her published work focuses on nineteenth-century Arabophone women's writing and ideologies of gender debate, including the role of translation. Recent research fellowships include the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; l'Institut d'études avancées, Paris; Neubauer Collegium for Society and Culture, Chicago. She was visiting professor, l'EHESS, Paris, in 2024. She has translated many works of Arabic fiction into English.