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Dr. Fella Lahmar is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). She is a Research Associate at the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER). She worked as a Ph.D. supervisor at the University of Bolton and led both MA Islamic Studies and MEd Education programs at the Markfield Institute of Higher Education, validated by Newman University, Birmingham. She also worked as a Research Associate on an international higher education project at the University of Nottingham. Prior to joining the Higher Education accredited sector, Fella gained ample experience as a lecturer and academic adviser at other non-accredited Islamic-based higher education institutions in the UK. Her teaching experience also involves teaching at Muslim schools, masjids, and other community organizations, including leading ‘Alimiyyah programs.
Fella’s broader research interest explores intersections between philosophy of education, policy making in education, educational leadership, Islamic education, migration, and identity formation. She has published on Islamic educational theory and practice, including higher education. Her Ph.D. and follow-up research examines Islamic education in Western contexts. She is a guest co-editor for the peer-reviewed journal: Religions’ special issue on Islamic education in Western Contexts. In terms of education, Fella has a Ph.D. in education and an ESRC-recognized MA in Educational Research Methods, both obtained at the University of Nottingham, a PGCert in Higher Education Practice (Newman University); an MA in Islamic Studies (Loughborough University); a PGCert in Professional Studies in Education (Open University); and a BA in Islamic Studies (Emir Abdelkader Islamic University in Algeria). |
Professor Ahmed El Shamsy is Professor of Islamic Thought and the Department Chair at the University of Chicago. He studies the intellectual history of Islam, focusing on the evolution of the classical Islamic disciplines and scholarly culture within their broader historical context. His research addresses themes such as orality and literacy, the history of the book, and the theory and practice of Islamic law.
El Shamsy’s first book, The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual History, traces the transformation of Islamic law from a primarily oral tradition to a systematic written discipline in the eighth and ninth centuries. In his second book, Rediscovering the Islamic Classics: How Editors and Print Culture Transformed an Intellectual Tradition, he shows how Arab editors and intellectuals in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries used the newly adopted medium of printing to rescue classical Arabic texts from oblivion and to popularize them as the classics of Islamic thought. Other recent research projects investigate the interplay of Islam with other religious and philosophical traditions, for example by exploring the influence of the Greek sage Galen on Islamic thought and the construction of a distinct self-identity among early Muslims. El Shamsy teaches courses and supervises student research on all aspects of classical Islamic thought. He is an associated (non-supervising) faculty member at the Divinity School. |
Prof. Aria Nakissa is an Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies and Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. He holds a PhD in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University, a JD from Harvard Law School, and an MA in Islamic Law from International Islamic University Malaysia. His research focuses on law and religion in the Muslim world, and he has conducted extensive field research in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, using the Arabic and Malaysian/Indonesian languages. His research has been supported by grants from the Fulbright Program and the Henry Luce Foundation.
Nakissa is author of the The Anthropology of Islamic Law: Education, Ethics, and Legal Interpretation at Egypt’s al-Azhar (Oxford, 2019). Nakissa’s research has also appeared in various journals including Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Islamic Law and Society, and Muslim World. Nakissa is currently working on a book titled: “Human Rights, Counterterrorism, and Islamic Reform: A Global Anthropological History from the Colonial Period to the Present.” The book can be described briefly as follows. “Human rights”, “counterterrorism”, and “Islamic reform” are three overlapping projects central to a distinctive mode of liberal governance applied to Muslim populations. These projects emerged in the nineteenth century under the British, French, Dutch, and Russian Empires. Today they are implemented by a global network of institutions, including government agencies, NGOs, educational organizations, and social media corporations. The books traces the development of these projects from the colonial period until the present. The book has both significant historical and ethnographic components. The ethnographic component centers on a comparative analysis of three linked regions; namely, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and North America. Data on Southeast Asia will be drawn from long-term fieldwork in Indonesia and Malaysia. Data on the Middle East will be drawn from long-term fieldwork in Egypt and Morocco. Data on North America will be drawn from long- term fieldwork in the United States. Research for the book will be conducted in the Arabic, Malaysian/Indonesian, English, French, and Dutch languages. |