"Between Authoritarianism and Intellectualism. Some Recent Controversies on the Role of Hadith in Sunnite Islam"

Prof. Rainer Brunner, born in 1964, was appointed as a Director of Research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Paris, in 2005. Before that he had held positions as a Research Associate at the Orientalisches Seminar of Freiburg University (1998-2004), Invited Director of Research at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Section Sciences Religieuses at the Sorbonne (2002), Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University Jerusalem (2002/03), and was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (2004/05). His main research interests are modern Muslim intellectual history, especially the history and theology of the Shia, the relationship between Sunni and Shia, and Islam in Europe.