Centre members
In addition to the Staff, Fellows and PhD students listed below, all Islamic Studies MA students at the IAIS as well as those taking an Islamic Studies module are members of the CSI.
If you are a student at the IAIS and wish to join the CSI, please write an email to email Ms Sarah Wood.
Research Staff
Dr Marya Hannun
(Specialisms: Islamic law, gender, and intellectual history of modern Afghanistan)
Dr Bianka Speidl
(Specialisms: political theories and environmental ethics in Imami Shiʿite Islam, Muslim-Christian dialogue in the Middle East, Contemporary Eastern Christianity)
Dr Marianna Zarantonello
(Specialisms: Islamic law, gender, and intellectual history of modern Afghanistan)
Honorary Research Fellows
Dr Saud Al-Sarhan
Former Research Visiting and Honorary Fellows
Dr Omar Anchassi
(Specialisms: Islamic Intellectual history (modern and premodern), Islamic law and legal theory, kalām-theology, and Qurʾānic studies)
Dr Belal El Abbas
(Specialisms: Islamic law and legal theory, Classical Sufism, Quranic Exegesis, The history of the hadith corpus as a discipline and literary genre.)
Samer El-Karanshawy
Sara Forcella
Dr Sejad Mekic
(Specialisms: Islamic law and jurisprudence, fatwas ands their interpretation in the odern period, Islamic law in the Balkans)
Dr Luca Patrizi
Dr Davide Pettinato
(Specialisms: Islamic charities in the Europe, NGOs and International Development in the Muslim World, Islamic perspectives on Climate Change)
Dr Christophe (Pooya) Razavian
(Specialisms: Modern Islamic philosophy and ethics, contemporary Iranian thought, digital humanities)
Dr Raha Rafii
(Specialisms: Law, Authority and Learning in Imami Shi’ite Islam)
Dr Amin Ehteshami
(Specialisms: Classical Islamic theology and law, Islamic legal theory, hadith and canonisation)
Dr Paul Gledhill
(Law and Learning in Imami Shiite Islam research fellow project; specialisms: early Islamic law and the formation of the law schools)
Dr Saeed Zarrabi-Zadeh
(Specialisms: Islamic mysticism, Sufism, religion and modernity, comparative mysticism, Persian literature)
Dr Cameron Zargar
(Specialisms: Modern Shiism, Clerical Authority, the theory and practice of taqlid)
Current PhD Students
Sayed Ismail Albehbehani, The Inhabitants of al-Baḥrayn and Kāẓima in Late Antiquity
Ahmed Aldhubayi
Mohammad Ashkanani, The Reception and Survival of the Poetry of Imruʾ al-Qays from the pre-Islamic to the Abbasid Era
Hassan Asiri, The Implicit Patterns in the Hijazi Sensual Ghazal Poetry during the Umayyad Era – A New Historicist Interpretation
Bryar Bajalan
Shahanaz Begum, From Language to Law – Islamic Legal Hermeneutics in the Formative Period
Alice van den Bosch, Creating the Female Martyr in Late Antique North Africa
Majida Deeb Ibrahim, Prominent Features and Translation Strategies of Arabic Feminist Literature: The case of Nawal el-Saadawi and Hanan al-Shaykh
Amir Mohammad Emami, What Has Athens to Do with Mecca and Medina? Mīrzā Mahdī Iṣfahānī (d. 1365/1946) on God, the Human, and Their Relation
Uzair Ibrahim, Amid Worlds Seen and Unseen: The Imam, the Ghayb, and History in South Asian Shiʿi Islam
Zahra Jafari, Treating Ḥadīth Contradictions by Means of Dissimulation in ShīʿīḤadīth Tradition by Yūsuf b. Aḥmad al-Baḥrānī
Hatice Kubra Memis, The Legal and Ethical Status of the Embryos in Islam
Arghavan Moharrami, The Winds of Zār: On Occult Performance among Black Indigenous Communities in the Persian Gulf
Abdulla Saad Moaswes
Majideh Qazizadeh, Islamicate Chess and Its Religious, Social and Scientific Contexts
Elias Ragi, Why Is Death, in Mikhail Naimy’s Literature, Looked at Conflictingly between Punishment and Reward?
Hasti Safavi, The Shrine Ensemble of Shaykh Safi al-Din Ardabili: An Islamic Philosophical Analysis
Mohammad-Payam Saadat Sarmadi, Devil’s Device: Islamic debates about legal analogy in the formative period
Dilshad Sharif
Catherine Tollerton, Is Piety Among Women Important in Understanding the Deoband Movement?
Ibrahim Urkac
Farhan Zaidi, The Ontology and Epistemology of Revelation in MullāṢadrā
Awarded PhD Students
Faris Abdel-Hadi,Scope of Ibn Arabi's Pluralism - Degrees of Inclusivity
Saliha Osama Farid Abdelkhalek, Being, Reification and Ritual: The Esoteric Paradigm of Ibn Arabi
Babar Ahmed, The Rational Psychology of Perfect Being Theology: Towards a New Islamic Hermeneutics
Zubir Rasool Ahmed, Rebuilding the Iraqi State: The Regional Dimension of Ethno-Sectarian Conflict (2003-2016)
Jaber Mohammed Alahmari, Arab poets’ perspectives on the arts Until the end of the 5th / 11th Century A thematic and rhetorical analytical approach
Usama Al-Atar, Theology of Nahj al-Balāgha
Khalid Abdulaziz Aldakheel, Development of Awareness: The Power of Society and Men in the Saudi Women's Novel
Ahmad Alfaraj, The Influence of the Discovery of Oil on the Poetry of a Selection of Modern Blind Poets from the Gulf Region
Saleh Owaid Alharbi, The Image of the West in Saudi poetry 1920-1990
Ghazoan Ali, Substance and Things: Dualism and Unity in the Early Islamic Cultural Field
Mehrdad Alipour, Negotiating Homosexuality in Contemporary Shīʿī Islam: a legal-hermeneutical analysis of Twelver Imāmī Shīʿī Islamic sources
Salih Maddah H Aljedani, The Holy Mosque in Mecca: A Study with Notes and Commentary of the Manuscript by Abu Abd Allah Muhammad al-Mahjub Entitled Qurrat al-c Ayn fi Awsaf al-Haramayn (Circa 9th/15th Century)
Maryam Alkandari, The Social Status of Female Slaves at the Abbasid Court (132-329 A.H./ 750-940 A.D.)
Ahmed Mukhtar Tweirsh Al-Malik, The Image of the Other: Representations of East-West Encounters in Anglo-American and Arabic Novels (1991-2001)
Abdullah Alobaid, Meta-Alexander- A New Complementary Model and Jurisprudential Theory for the Study of Muslim Historiography – 3rd/9th – 4th/10th Centuries
Abdullah Abdulrahman A Aloraini,Argumentation and Poetry: A Pragmatic Literary Study of the Diwan Group’s Poetic Discourse
Reem Saud Al Rudainy, The Role of Women in the Būyid and Saljūq Periods of the Abbasid Caliphate (339-447/9501055&447-547/1055-1152): The Case of Iraq
Saud Saleh Al Sarhan, Early Muslim Traditionalism: A Critical Study of the Works and Political Theology of Ahmad Ibn Hanbal
Asma Abdulrahim Alshaiban, An analytical study of Ibn Wāṣil’s Mufarrij al-Kurūb fī Akhbār Banī Ayyūb (The Dissipater of Anxieties in the Report of the Ayyubids) The Political Historiography of Women in the late Ayyubid Dynasty: 589-648/1193-1250
Yasmin Amin, Humour in the Ḥadīth
Mohammed Faia Asiri, A Saudi Representation of America and the Americans An Imagological Study of Ghazi Al-Gosaibi’s Works
Hamdullah Baycar, Nationalism and Tolerance Discourse in the United Arab Emirates Balancing Exclusive Belonging and Inclusive Non-Belonging
Ahab Bdaiwi, Shiʿi Defenders of Avicenna: An Intellectual History of the Philosophers of Shiraz
Hasan J E H M Beloushi, The Theory of Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿa in Shīʿī Jurisprudence: Muḥammad Taqī al-Mudarrisī as a Model
Mohamed Bin Ali, The Islamic Doctrine of Al-Wala' wal Bara' (Loyalty and Disavowal) in Modern Salafism
Mohd Khairul Anam Bin Che Mentri, Avicenna on Knowledge
Corrie Jonn Block, Expanding the Qur'anic Bridge
Amirah Bukhari, Casting a New Light on al-Jurjānī’s naẓm-i‘jāz Theory: Studies in Language and Exegesis in the Modern and Pre-Modern Era
Michael Calabria, “The Foremost of Believers:” The Egyptians in the Qur’ān, Islamic Exegesis, and Extra-Canonical Texts
Leila Chamankhah, The Concept of Guardianship (wilāya) in the Iranian Intellectual Tradition From 1800 to 1989, With Particular Reference to the Ideas of Ayatollah Khomeini
Rhiannon Conner, From Amuq to Glastonbury: Situating the apocalypticism of Shaykh Nazim and the Naqshbandi-Haqqaniyya
Zamira Imatovna Dildorbekova, The Dynamics of Islam and Modernity in Tajikistan: Contemporary Ismaili Discourse
Fawzy Shaban Elgariani, Al-Qawa'id al-Fiqhiyyah (Islamic Legal Maxims): Concept, Functions, History, Classifications and Application to Contemporary Medical Issues
Sherry Sayed Gad Elrab ElSayed, Dangerous Sexualities: The Construction of Sexual Knowledge in Egypt, 1800-1928
Miles Elwell, Existential Religiosity, Individuality, and Theosis in the Thought of Bishop George Khodr
Zoheir Ali Esmail, Between Philosophy and ʿIrfān: Interpreting MullāṢadrā from the Qajars to Post-Revolutionary Iran
Robert Fuller, The orientation of the Kaʿba to Jerusalem: two sanctuaries. An older love affair?
Massimiliano Fusari, Post-Produced Cultures - Meta-Images, Aesthetics and the Hawzas
Shayesteh Ghofrani, Comparative Analysis of wilāya in the Formative Period of Shiʿism and Sufism
John Goodman, A Different Path: The Minority Muslim Experience in Southeast Asia
Emad Hamdeh, The Emergence of an Iconoclast: Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī and His Critics
Khalifa Ezzat Abuzeid Hassan, People of the Book An Analytical Study of Jews and Christians in the Qur’an With Particular Reference to Contemporary Exegetical Discourse
Omneya Nabil Muhammad Ibrahim, Divine Love in the Moroccan Sufi Tradition: Ibn ‘Ajība (d. 1224/1809) and His Oceanic Exegesis of the Qur’ān
Tajul Islam, Scholastic Traditional Minimalism: A Critical Analysis of Intra-Sunni Sectarian Polemics
Jewel Hossain Jalil, The Consolidation of the Ḥanbalī Law School between 4th/10th – 6th/12th Centuries
Fouad Jabir Kadhem, The 'ulama of Najaf in Iraqi Politics between 1950 and 1980
Colleen Marie Keyes, The Significance of Edward Said’s Notion of “Secular” Criticism in his Work on Islam and the Problematic of Palestine-Israel
Majid Montazer Mahdi, Politics of Collective Biographies of Shiʿi Ulama in the 17th and 18th Centuries: The Case of Amal al-Āmil and Luʾluʾat al-Baḥrayn
Hamid Reza Maghsoodi, The Role of ʿaql in the Thought of Mīrzā Mahdī Iṣfahānī
Abdelghani Mimouni, Debating al-Ḥākimiyyah and Takfīr in Salafism: The Genesis of Intra-Salafī Schism in the 1990s
Yasmin Hanani Mohd Safian, Necessity (darura) in Islamic Law: A study with special reference to the Harm Reduction Programme in Malaysia
Walead Mohammed Mosaad, The Transmission of the Islamic Tradition in the Early Modern Era: The Life and Writings of Aḥmad Al-Dardīr
Rishad Raffi Motlani, Islam, Euthanasia and Western Christianity: Drawing on Western Christian thinking to develop an expanded Western Sunni Muslim perspective on euthanasia
Assmaa Mohamed Naguib, Representations of ‘Home’ from the Setting of ‘Exile’: Novels by Arab Migrant Writers
Caroline Neumueller, The 21st Century New Muslim Generation: Converts in Britain and Germany
Farag I.M. Omar, Structures of government in Almohad Iberia
Sümeyye Parıldar, Intentionality in MullāṢadrā
Davide Domenico Pettinato, Understanding the Discourse of British Muslim NGOs: Islamic Relief and MADE as Case Studies
Kumail Rajani, Making Sense of Ismaili Traditions: The Modes and Meanings of the Transmission of Ḥadīth in the Works of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān (d. 363/974)
Christopher Pooya Razavian, The Discursive Self: Rethinking the Relationship Between Autonomy and Tradition in Shi’i Thought
Carla E Roland, Why Can't They Be More Like Us? Baptism and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Spain
Geoffrey Brandon Sage, The Muwashshah, Zajal, and Kharja: What came before and what became of them
Zainab Sayed Zahed, The Imaginary Context in Nahj al-Balāghah: Theory and Practice
Amir Shaharuddin, A Study on Mudarabah in Islamic Law and its Application in Malaysian Islamic Banks
Ghulam Shamas ur Rehman, A Critical Edition of Qawaid al-Tasawwuf by Ahmad Zarruq (d. 899/1493) with Introduction
Linda Marianne Sijbrand, The Social Role of Spiritual Communication: Authority as a Relationship between Shaykh and Follower in the Contemporary Ṭarīqa Shadhuliyya-Yashrutiyya in Amman, Acre and Jaffa
Bianka Ágnes Speidl, Conceptualisation of Power in the Thought of Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah
Khaled Troudi, Qurʾanic Hermeneutics with Reference to Narratives: A Study in Classical Exegetical Traditions
Emine Enise Yakar, The Interaction Between Islamic Legal Methodologies and Social Context in the Light of the Contemporary Practice of Iftā’: A Case Study of Two Institutions
Farah Zeb, Ethical Conundrums and Lived Praxis: Queer Muslim Women in Malaysia and Lebanon