Ronald E. Kon (Arnhem, 1954) is an Arabist who took his MA at Amsterdam University in 1983. During his university studies he taught Arabic at the Royal Tropical Institute (Amsterdam). Subsequently he served for 9 months as a MIO/interpreter of Arabic for the United Nations in South Lebanon. Since 1985 he has been teaching Arabic language, literature, history and culture at Leiden University. In 1988 and 1991-1993 he taught these subjects simultaneously at Groningen State University. Since 2006 he has been teaching Arabic at Amsterdam University, too. In 2012 he participated twice in the course Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language (Cairo). His private interest centers around the Yemeni literary tradition in manuscript (in 1997 he headed the mission of the Leiden based Legatum Warnerianum to the Tarim Manuscript Library in Wadi Hadramut, Yemen) and in print, the dialectology of Yemen, and travelogues concerning this country (2005: “Nawoord” in Thorkild Hansen, Het gelukkige Arabië. Roman van een Deense expeditie, 1761-1767).