Denis MacEoin
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Denis M. MacEoin PhD (b. 1949) is a novelist and a former lecturer in Islamic studies. His academic specializations are Shi‘ism, Shaykhism, Bábism, and the Bahá'í Faith, on all of which he hs written extensively.
He and his wife live in Newcastle upon Tyne, in the United Kingdom.
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[edit] Background and education
MacEoin was born in Belfast in 1949. He studied English Language and Literature at the University of Dublin (Trinity College), Persian, Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Edinburgh, and carried out research for his PhD at King's College, Cambridge. His PhD dissertation dealt with two heterodox movements in 19th-century Iranian Shi‘ism: Shaykhism and Bábism.
From 1979-80, he taught English, Islamic Civilization, and Arabic-English translation at Mohammed V University in Fez, Morocco, before taking up a post as lecturer in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University. His post at Newcastle was abolished in 1986 by its Saudi sponsors, who disliked the fact that he was teaching subjects such as Sufism and Shi'ism. In 1986, he was made Honorary Fellow in the Centre for Islamic and Middle East Studies at Durham University. Currently, he is the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Newcastle University.
He has been married to homoeopath and health writer Beth MacEoin since 1975. Beth is the author of the NMS book, Natural Medicine: A practical guide to family Health, which was published by Bloomsbury at the end of 1999.
An advocate of alternative medicine since the 1960s, he has in more recent years taken a serious interest in the sociology and politics of medicine, and in the relations between CAM and conventional therapy. He regularly lectures to medical students on these topics. For many years, until its demise in 2003, he was chairman, then president of the Natural Medicines Society, a UK charity for the general public.
In recent years, he has become active in pro-Israel advocacy (hasbara), chiefly in his capacity as a writer.
Since September 2005, he has served as the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Newcastle University.
[edit] Publications
He has published extensively on Islamic topics, contributing to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Islam in the Modern World, the Encyclopaedia Iranica, the Penguin Handbook of Religions, journals, festschrifts, and books, and has himself written a number of academic books.
He was a member of the Bahá'í Faith from 1965-1980, but left the movement over differences with the administration. For several years he published books and articles critical of Bahá'í practices, and their level of scholarship.
- Denis MacEoin (1994). Rituals in Babism and Baha'ism. UK: British Academic Press and Centre of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge. ISBN 1850436541.
Since 1986 he has pursued his principal career as a novelist, having so far written twenty-three novels, several of them best-sellers. He uses the pen-names Daniel Easterman (international thrillers) and Jonathan Aycliffe (classic ghost stories in the Jamesian tradition). Among the best-known Easterman titles are: The Seventh Sanctuary, The Ninth Buddha, The Judas Testament, Brotherhood of the Tomb, K is for Killing, The Final Judgement, Midnight Comes at Noon, Night of the Seventh Darkness, and Maroc. Some Aycliffe titles include Naomi's Room, Whispers in the Dark, The Matrix, The Lost and A Garden Lost in Time. A collection of his journalism was published under the Easterman name by HarperCollins in 1992 under the title New Jerusalems: Islam, the Rushdie Affair, and Religious Fundamentalism.
[edit] Degrees
- 1971 B.A. Honors in English Language and Literature, Trinity College, Dublin
- 1974 M.A. English Language and Literature, Trinity College, Dublin
- 1975 M.A. (1st. Class) in Persian with Arabic and Islamic Studies, Edinburgh
- 1979 Ph.D. in Persian Studies, Cambridge
[edit] External links
- Biography
- Biography - From Newcastle University
- British Bias - From the Foundation for Defense of Democracies
