Isabel Toral-Niehoff studied History and Arabic Studies in Tübingen (PhD 1997), Habilitation 2008 (FU Berlin).

Her main publishing and research fields are: Arabia and the Near East in Late Antiquity; cultural identity; cultural transfer processes; Arabic Occult Sciences; Classical Arabic literature and historiography. She has recently published a monograph al-Hira. Eine arabische Kulturmetropole im spätantiken Kontext (Brill 2014).

From August 2014-2016 she worked as a senior researcher in the Junior Research Group "Revelation, Reason, and Identity: Education in Early and Classical Islam (from the 7th to the 13th century") at the Courant Research Centre EDRIS, University of Göttingen.