Arabic and Islamic Studies

Find out about the individual staff members in the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, their research interests, publications and current projects in our staff profiles area.

MPhil/PhD students work alongside researchers within the following research centres:

• Centre for Gulf Studies
• Centre for Persian and Iranian Studies
• Centre for Kurdish Studies
• European Centre for Palestine Studies
• Centre for the Study of Islam
• Centre for Islamic Archaeology
• Centre for Middle East Politics 
• Centre for Magic and Esotericism

Founded in 1978, Exeter’s Centre for Gulf Studies is an inter-disciplinary team of international researchers in humanities and social sciences interested in all aspects of anthropology, sociology, modern and contemporary history, politics and international relations, political economy and material culture of the Arabian Peninsula. The Centre provides a world recognised environment for research, hosting PhD students, visiting researchers and externally funded projects. For a decade, it has been the fertile incubator of new critical Gulf Studies contributing to drastically reshape research on the region.

The Centre has been hosting the longest-running conference series on the Gulf region and Arabian Peninsula since 1979. One of the largest in the world, Exeter's Gulf Collection totals over 100,000 items on Yemen and the Gulf monarchies and is housed in the University's Arab World Documentation Unit.

In addition, our staff plays an active role in advising on the Gulf political and economic affairs and the preservation of cultural heritage.

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The Centre for Persian and Iranian Studies was founded back in 2008 and has been active in research on modern Iranian history from 1800 and in the broad areas of Persian literature and its relationship to Sufism. In order to avoid the assumption that Persian and Iranian can be conflated into one, we have insisted on keep the two categories distinct in our name and practice, albeit while recognising their overlaps. We have hosted a number of major international conferences such as Hafez and the Religion of Love in 2012, Iran in the 18th Century in 2015, and Sufis and Mullahs in 2016 all of which resulted in published volumes that have shaped the field. The Centre also hosted important projects such as poets in the Timurid period and the Golha project digitising songs and music from Iranian radio in the 1970s.

Unfortunately following the loss of the founding directors, Leonard Lewisohn and Michael Axworthy in 2018 and 2019 respectively, and then with the lockdown, we have been less active but are in the process of rebuilding, especially with the work on contemporary Iran led by the new director. We have had an important community of research students working primarily in Iranian intellectual history and look forward to developing it with the revival of our MA programme in Iranian Studies as well as a renewal of interest in innovative research topics and approaches to modern Iran and other Persophone contexts and the study of Persian and Iranian literatures and cultural studies with further workshops, invited lecture, and online engagements and events. We also welcome students looking to study the connected histories and practices that link Iran to other Persian speaking communities and beyond in what sometimes has been described as the Persian cosmopolis.

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Those interested in studying the MPhil/PhD Kurdish Studies will& work alongside researchers from the Centre for Kurdish Studies. Exeter is the only British university to have developed a strong research focus in the field of Kurdish Studies, with the two main Kurdish dialects being taught. As such, we are the leading centre of research in the field in the UK, and one of the global centres of excellence. The Centre has built cooperation with scholars worldwide and aims to develop further this current collaboration and to launch further research initiatives. With our programme of international conferences, workshops and seminars, we also provide a forum for the discussion of topics relevant to Kurdish Studies.

Our focus on Kurdish Studies places the Kurds at the centre of our research and teaching activities, and offers a chance to consider Kurdish society, culture and politics holistically in all its complexity and variation, across and within established nation-states and the global diaspora community.

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The European Centre for Palestine Studies (ECPS) was the first of its kind in the world. It is dedicated to researching and teaching the modern history and current affairs of Palestine and the Palestinians. Professor Ilan Pappe and Dr Ghada Karmi founded the ECPS in 2009, building on the work already done in the university, by the Palestine Studies Trust founded by Dr Uri Davis in the early 1980s.

It focuses on post graduate studies and offers special programs, lectures and workshop on Palestine in the past and in the present. It is now part of a network of similar centres around the world, all working together to build a solid scholarly infrastructure on Palestine and the Palestinians that has already benefited anyone involved in the search for peace and justice in this part of the world.

ECPS draws upon the expertise of a distinguished group of scholars in Middle Eastern Studies, both from IAIS and from various departments in the university.

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The Centre for the Study of Islam is perhaps the leading collection of researchers in Britain in Islamic studies covering a range of areas with a strong focus on intellectual history as an approach and the study of Islamic law and legal theory, philosophy and theology, Sufism, classical Islamic history and belles-lettres as areas of inquiry. It is a well-established area of research at Exeter dating back to the study of Islam in the Theology department in the 1970s with major figures like M.A. Shaban, Aziz al-Azmeh, Ian Netton, and Gautier Juynboll. We approach the study of Islam broadly beyond the traditional Arabic and Persian contexts and welcome research students working on other parts of the Muslim world, with interests both in history and in the contemporary world. As such our students often have a broad supervision with our colleagues in other centres and indeed in other departments. The centre has hosted a number of research projects especially in Islamic law, life and practice in the contemporary Muslim world, the nature of the seminaries, and philosophy in the Muslim world.

Apart from regular weekly research seminars for the research community in Exeter, workshops and conferences relating to the projects of the faculty, the CSI also runs lectures with leading visiting academics in the field and hosts a termly research afternoon where we convene to discuss an issue of research relevant to us with an invited keynote speakers and early career researchers. One of our most interesting recent developments – running into the third year – is the hosting of a visiting Al-Qasimi Professor of Islamic Studies who plays a critical role in the life of the centre but also acts as the interface with the wider world through outreach activities. CSI has played an important role in the digital strategy of the IAIS taking our research and its dissemination online through the effective use of social media and streaming platforms to bring cutting edge conversations on the nature of Islamic studies to a global audience. Our faculty have consistently been engaged in advising institutions outside of academia on matter relating to Islam in the world and in Britain in particular and continue to play an active role in the media in shaping our debates on Islam.

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Founded in June 2017, the Centre for Islamic Archaeology in the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter is a centre for teaching and research on all aspects of Islamic archaeology and Islamic material culture studies across the World, and for all periods. Adopting an anthropologically informed and historically aware approach, staff expertise encompasses epigraphy, maritime archaeology, ethnography, and archaeology. Cross-disciplinary research and teaching is a core strength of the Centre through active links with university departments in Europe, Africa, Egypt, and the Arabian Peninsula, as well as across the University of Exeter. Fieldwork is one of our core activities, and in which many students participate either through their own projects, or as part of staff-led fieldwork.

The Centre hosts several major externally funded research projects and a thriving PhD student community. Public engagement and presentation of research results is a further key activity of the Centre, through Exhibition curation in the Street Gallery in the Institute, and elsewhere, and via conferences such as Indian Ocean World Archaeology (Exeter, 2020) or Islamic Archaeology in Global Perspective (Bahrain, 2017) lectures, and seminars.

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An interdisciplinary centre at the University of Exeter, the Centre for Magic and Esotericism explores topics related to the history of magic, occult, and esoteric literatures using a ground-breaking approach by studying many different cultures and languages all in dialogue with one another.

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Tuition fees per year 2025/26

• Home: £4,950 full-time; £pro-rata part-time
• International: £23,500 full-time

For those studying for more than one year, our fees are expected to increase modestly in line with Consumer Price Inflation measured in December each year. More information can be found on our Student Finance webpages.

Tuition fees per year 2024/25

• Home: £4,786 full-time; £pro-rata part-time
• International: £22,600 full-time

For those studying for more than one year, our fees are expected to increase modestly in line with Consumer Price Inflation measured in December each year. More information can be found on our Student Finance webpages.

Our Postgraduate Funding webpage provides links to further information. If you are considering a PhD in the future, in addition to University of Exeter funding, we have been successful at securing postgraduate funding for PhD research through our Funded centres.

Current available funding