Annual Conference of the British Association for Islamic Studies

Monday 18^th-Tuesday 19^th May 2026

10 Handyside Street, London, N1C 4DN

Conference Programme

The British Association for Islamic Studies is delighted to be returning to the Aga Khan University's Institute for the Study of Muslims Civilisations and The Institute of Ismaili Studies at the Aga Khan Centre, London, for its 2026 Annual Conference on 18 & 19 May 2026. 

Below you will find the provisional conference programme. Please be aware that the programme is likely to change in the months leading up to our conference. 

To view the programme with all paper abstracts CLICK HERE.

Day 1: Monday 18 May 2026

10.00 - 10.10: Words of Welcome (ACR)

Fozia Bora (University of Leeds, Chair of the British Association for Islamic Studies) and Jonas Otterbeck (ISMC). 

10.10 - 11.20: Opening Keynote (ACR)

Professor Ovamir Anjum (University of Toledo) 

'Managing Deep Differences: Notes on an Ummatic Political Theory'

Chair: Dr Hadiza Kere Abdulrahman (University of Lincoln)

11.20-11.30: BRAIS Prize in the Study of Islam and the Muslim World Announcement (ACR)

11:30-12:00: Refreshments

12.00-13.30: Panel Session 1   

Akhbārī Knowledge and the Reconfiguration of Shiʿi Scholarship in Late Safavid Iran (Room 219)

Chair: Majid Montazer Mahdi (Institute of Ismaili Studies)

Robert Gleave (University of Exeter) Safavid Akhbārī ḥadīth commentary: Muḥammad Taqī al-Majlisī’s Lawāmiʿ Ṣāhibqirānī 

Majid Montazer Mahdi (Institute of Ismaili Studies) Writing the Self into Tradition: al-Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī and the Politics of Scholarly Memory 

Zahra Jafari (University of Exeter) Late Safavid Akhbārī Reorientation: Shaykh Yūsuf al-Baḥrānī’s Legal Legacy

Lived Islam in Britain: Welfare, Solidarity, and Spiritual Experience (Room 216)

Chair: Jorgen Neilsen (University of Birmingham)

Hanan Basher (Cardiff University) Qur'anic Approaches to Spiritual Care by Muslim Chaplaincy in British Higher Education 

Muhammad Nabil (SOAS) Britain's First Muslim Burial Fund: Archival Narratives of Migration, Civil Society and Welfare 

Muthanna Saari (University of Sussex) Zakat and the moral economy: Ethic of care, social solidarity and the aspiration for a good life 

Ruqaiah Al-Kabab (University of Salford) Young Arab Muslim Adults' Lived Spiritual Experience with Allah while studying in the UK: An integrated research methodology 

Gender, Power, and Interpretation in Islamic History and Thought (Room 220)

Chair: Karen Bauer (The Institute of Ismaili Studies) 

Majideh Qazizadeh (University of Exeter) Women, Myth, and the Gendering of Chess in Islamicate Literature 

Laila Halani (The Institute of Ismaili Studies) Female empowerment: 'Khoja' and Momin engagement with their Aga Khan III's vision as reflected in the community's Rules (1905-1950s) 

Qudsia Mirza (University of East London) Beyond Text and Tradition: Women's Interpretive Interventions in Modern Islamic Law 

Transmission of Knowledge and Classifications of the Sciences Across Islamicate Cultures (Room 215)

Chair: Petra Schmidl (FAU Erlangen-Nuernberg) 

Godefroid de Callatay (UCLouvain) The Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’s classification of the sciences: an overview of its diffusion and reception over the ages and cultures 

Laura Tribuzio (UC Louvain) Marks of Power, Traces of Knowledge: Ottoman Manuscripts of the Mujmal al-Ḥikma and the Brethren of Purity 

Ahmed Tahir Nur (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) From Alexandria to Baghdad to Istanbul: Tracing an Influential Framing of Knowledge 

Razieh Mousavi (FAU Erlangen-Nuernberg) Unity in Diversity: Numbers and the Synthesis of Knowledge in a Safavid Classification of Sciences 

Beyond Historiography: Alternative Sources for Early and Medieval Islamic History (Room 221)

Chair: Adam Ramadhan (Leiden University)

Leone Pecorini Goodall (Leiden University) Identifying and investigating maternal kinship ties in Umayyad and Alid panegyric 

Aliya Abdulkadir Ali (University of Cambridge) Imagining and Erasing: Women’s Political Roles in Early Islamic Genealogical and Narrative Traditions 

Aslisho Qurboniev (Institute of Ismaili Studies) Using Fatimid ‘propaganda’ as a historical source 

Clement Salah (University of Oxford) Manuscripts and Mālikī Scholarship: The Kairouan Collection as an Alternative Source for Early Islamic History 

East African Muslim sojourners in colonial Britain: Archaeology, anthropology and the (counter) archive of Bradford's 1904 Somali Village (ACR)

13.30-14.30: Lunch

14.30-16.00: Panel Session 2 

Ijtihād, Ethics, and Islamic Legal Theory Across Time (Room 219)

Chair: Mohammad Rasekh (Institute of Ismaili Studies) 

Ali-Reza Bhojani (University of Birmingham) Ijtihād and plurality: theorising difference from theology to law and ethics 

John Burden (University of Chicago) After Ijtihād: Imām al-Ḥaramayn al-Juwaynī and the Emergence of the Qāʿida Fiqhiyya 

Alexandre Caeiro (Hamad Bin Khalifa University) Social Critique in Modern Hadith Commentary: A Study of the Doha Sharia Judge Aḥmad b. Ḥajar Āl Būṭāmī al-Bin‘alī’s 1981 Kabā’ir Text 

Al-Bukhārī: Islam’s Foremost Traditionist (Room 221)

Chair: Rob Gleave (University of Exeter) 

Belal Alabbas (Cambridge Muslim College/University of Bristol), Jon Hoover (University of Nottingham), Omar Anchassi (University of Bern) and Ramon Harvey (Cambridge Muslim College) will discuss Dr Alabbas’s new book ‘Al-Bukhārī: The Life, Theology and Legal Thought of Islam’s Foremost Traditionist’. 

Infrastructures of Care, Charity and Constraint: Islamic Authority from the Humanitarian Sphere to the Household (Room 215)

Chair: Justin Jones (University of Oxford)

Emma Tomalin (University of Leeds) Beyond Tangibles: Muslim Local Faith Actors and the Intangible Work of Post-Conflict Development in Mindanao 

Sandra Pertek (University of Birmingham) Developing Islamic ethico-legal framework toward women’s protection in forced displacement 

Muhammad Nabil (SOAS) British Muslim Charities: Contemporary Manifestations of Canons and Traditions 

Muhammad Faisal Khalil (University of Oxford) Fractal Sovereignty and Rent Registers in the Muslim Household: Clerical Fief-holders from Marriage to Death

Transregional Sufism: Ontology, Ritual, and Reform from the 13th Century to the Present (Room 220)

Chair: Walid Ghali (AKU-ISMC) 

Sepideh Afrashteh (Ryukoku University) The Ontology of the Human Being in Rūmī’s Mathnawī in Light of Ibn ʿArabī’s Metaphysical Thought 

Fitzroy Morrissey (University of Oxford) Ibn ʿArabī’s treatment of samāʿ in al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyyah 

Sheridan Polinsky (Tubingen University) Apocalypticism in Contemporary Indonesia: The Rise and Fall of Muhammad Efendi Sa'ad and the Tareket al-Mu'min 

New Approaches to Shiʿi Hadith (ACR)

Chair: George Warner (Institute of Ismaili Studies)

Zarangez Karimova (Institute of Ismaili Studies) Inside al-Wāfī: Epistemology and Ontology in Fayḍ al-Kāshānī's Compendium 

Stephen Burge (Institute of Ismaili Studies) Fasting in al-Kulaynī’s Furūʿ al-Kāfī: A Structural Analysis 

Hasan Al-Khoee (Institute of Ismaili Studies) The Traditions of the Imams as Historiographical Correctives in Early Shiʿi Literature 

George Warner (Institute of Ismaili Studies) ‘Our Speech Is Difficult’: Conceptualising the Speech of ʿAlī in Early Commentaries on Nahj al-balāgha 

16.00-16.30: Refreshments

16.30-18.00: Panel Session 3 

Beyond Boundaries: Examining Cross-Communal Interactions in Early and Medieval Islam (ACR)

Chair: Leone Pecorini Goodall (Leiden University)

Kyle Longworth (Leiden University) Does Class Transcend Community? The Economic Backgrounds of Muslim and Non-Muslim Administrators during the Umayyad Caliphate (ca. 661–750) 

Adam Ramadhan (Leiden University) Congregational Prayer and Communal Boundaries in the Early Imāmī Community 

Yi-Chia Chang (University of Edinburgh) Crossing Communal Knowledge Boundaries: The Transmission and Reception of Yaḥyā b. Sallām al-Baṣrī’s Tafsīr in the Early Islamic West

Clara Pitocchi (University of Oxford) Legal Confusion or Legal Pluralism? A Draft Inheritance Query to Muslim Jurists from the Cairo Geniza 

Islam, Knowledge, and Narrative in Contemporary Culture (Room 220)

Chair: Uzair Ibrahim (University of Exeter) 

Silke Ackermann (Oxford University, History of Science Museum) What do we mean by "Islamic Science" in Museums? 

Jonas Otterbeck (Aga Khan University, ISMC) Cubism is Divine: Rasheed Araeen's universalism and rebuttal of Eurocentric art history 

Laura Peh (Cinnamon Art Publishing) Muslim Representation in Children's Picture Books: Identity and Islamophobia 

Reconfiguring “Reality”, Authority, and Political Theology in Contemporary Muslim Thought: Fiqh al-Wāqiʿ, Post-Salafism, and the Politics of Islamic Renewal (Room 221)

Chair: Besnik Sinani (Tubingen University) 

Besnik Sinani (Tubingen University) Post-Salafism: Religious Revisionism and Political Transformation in Contemporary Muslim Thought 

Rezart Beka (Hamad Bin Khalifa University) Theorizing Reality in Contemporary Islamic Thought: The Case of Scholars of Fiqh al-Wāqiʿ 

Ermin Sinanovic (Shenandoah University) Embedded Islamism: Evidence from Southeast Asia

Towards a “Barbados-to-Bengal” Complex? Rethinking the Scales of Global Islam through Latin America and the Caribbean (Room 219)

Chair: Ken Chitwood (Universität Bayreuth)

This roundtable proposes a “Barbados-to-Bengal Complex” as both an extension and critique of Shahab Ahmed’s  “Balkans-to-Bengal Complex.” Ahmed mapped a vast post-Mongol, Afro-Eurasian zone—stretching from Southeast Europe through Anatolia, Iran, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent—held together by shared concepts, Sufi-inflected practices, circulating texts, and entangled histories. While his formulation, which foregrounded the movement of people, ideas, texts, and devotional forms, challenged Eurocentric divisions and disciplinary silos, its geographic concentration inadvertently reinforced the marginalization of histories and contemporary formations beyond Afro-Eurasia. Specifically, this roundtable discusses an agenda for theorizing global Islam in ways that are not merely geographically expanded but conceptually re-scaled. It positions the Americas as integral, rather than peripheral, to understanding Islamic belonging, circulation, and religious formation in a globalised world. 

Participants:

Kholoud Al-Ajarma (University of Edinburgh)

Ken Chitwood (Universität Bayreuth)

Mark Lindley-Highfield of Ballumbie Castle (University of the Highlands and Islands, Inverness) 

Negotiating Muslimness: Gender, Law, Media, and Power in Global Context (Room 215)

Chair: Aneeq Ejaz (University of Texas at Austin) 

Sumeera Hassan (University of Helsinki) Scripturalist Micro-Authority Online: Clip Culture and the Negotiation of Kinship Ethics in the Finnish-Pakistani Diaspora

Gianluca Parolin (Aga Khan University, ISMC) Nitṭallaʾ? Redefining Agency in Divorce on Egyptian Screens: Intersections of Gender and Class in Islamic Law and the Humanities 

Nafisa Kianni (University of East London) An intersectional analysis of British Muslim women’s political experiences during the process of selection, election and operation of the work environment

18.00-19.00: Reception hosted by the Aga Khan University's Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (Atrium)

18.30-19.30: Special Panel: Advice for Postgraduate and Early Career Researchers in Islamic Studies (ACR)

Day 2: Tuesday 19 May  

10.00-11.30: Panel Session 4 

Law, Authority, and Reform in the Late Ottoman Empire (Room 220)

Chair: Tom Woener-Powell (University of MAnchester)

Hamdi Çilingir (Sakarya University) and Şerife Eroğlu Memiş (Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University) Between State Interest and Waqf Interest: The Council of State (Şûrâ-yı Devlet) and Ottoman Interventions in Waqfs, 1868–1908 

Ismail Noyan (Simon Fraser University) Towards a More Connected History of the Mecelle: Islamic Law, Codification, and Transimperial Networks Beyond Istanbul 

Bilal Taşkın (Istanbul Medeniyet University) Layers of Reality in Late Ottoman Thought: Ismā‘īl al-Galanbawī’s Theory of Nefs al-Amr 

From Creed to Currency: Islamic Legal and Ethical Reasoning Across Time and Space (Room 215)

Chair: Ali-Reza Bhojani (University of Birmingham) 

Camelia Garchi (Ez-zitouna University) Shari'ah Compliance or Islamic Moral Economy? Operationalising Ibn Ashur's Maqasid via sustainability 

Kadir Gombeyaz (Kocaeli University) The First (?) Commentary on al-Fiqh al-Akbar Written in Mamluk Egypt: Ahmad b. Sayf al-Din b. Fakhr al-Din al-Nasafi and His Sharh al-Fiqh al-Akbar 

Syed Muhammad Bilal Zaidi (LUMS) When "Principal" Loses Meaning: Ribā, Fiat Money, and the Ethics of Obligation 

Between Tradition and Nation in East and Southeast Asian Islam (Room 219)

Chair: Ermin Sinanovic (Shenandoah University) 

Adele Cozzani (University of Naples) Islamic education in China during the Ming-Qing era: an introduction to Jingtang Jiaoyu, the Chinese Islamic educational system 

Trang Nguyen Quynh (VNU University of Social Sciences and Humanities) The Philosophy of “Purification” in Shiʿa Theology and Its Localization through the Roja Ritual of the Cham Bani Community in Vietnam 

Irfan Sarhindi (University of Oxford) Between Pancasila and Caliphate: Muslim Students Making Sense of Political Standpoints in Indonesia's Post-Digital Education 

Tingting Zhong (University of St Andrews) A Mainland Hui Muslim on the Periphery: Naming "Self" and "Other" in Ma Jianfu's Zaichang de Xinyang 

Islam in Contemporary Europe: Faith, Migration, and Governance (Room 221)

Chair: Alyaa Ebbiary (Lancaster University)

Martin Eidrup (University of Gothenburg) and Goran Larsson (University of Gothenburg) Regulating Islam Through Democracy Criteria: A Comparison of Swedish and Belgian Legislation 2015-2025 

Egdunas Racius (Vytautas Magnus University) and Katarzyna Gorak-Sosnowska (Warsaw School of Economics) Migration of Central and Eastern European convert Muslims to the MENA region: between religious obligation (of hijra) and utility 

Daniel Vékony (Corvinus University of Budapest) Rejecting “bad Muslims”: The selective nature of Central European migration policies and image construction of Muslims in the context regular and irregular migration 

Hermeneutics in Motion: Ethics, Mysticism, and Moral Consciousness in the Qurʾān (ACR)

Chair: Ahmed Tahir Nur (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Sheam Abdul Aziz Khan (Cardiff University) Before the Pen Touches the Page: The Qur'an as Read by its Translators - A Study of Contextual Determinants in the Hermeneutics of Qur'anic Translation 

Shabnaz Khan (Institute of Ismaili Studies) Between Text and Practice: Testimonial Inequality, Qurʾānic Verse 2:282, and It's Legal Application in Pakistan  

Abdud Dayyan Mohammad Younus (University of Birmingham) Mystical Ways of Knowing and Hermeneutical Coherence in Tafsīr al-Mahāʾimī 

11:30-12:00: Refreshments

12.00-13.30: Panel Session 5   

Muslim Women at the Intersection of Theology and the State (221)

Chair: Laila Halani (Institute of Ismaili Studies) 

Whitney Buchanan (University of Edinburgh) Progressive Muslimah Leaders' Engagement with Political Muslim Advocacy in the United States and Germany 

Anika Kabani (University of Oxford) Islam as Explanation, Secularity as Requirement: The predicament of Muslim women asylum seekers in the U.S. 

Fatimah Aidara (Independent Researcher) Rābiʿah Reimagined: Divine Love and Poetic Longing in Contemporary Expressions of Tasawwuf 

Thulfekar Ali (University of Glasgow) Which Eve, Which Women? Creation Narratives and the Making of Women’s Status in Islamic Thought 

Islam in Conversation: Textual, Theological, and Religious Boundaries (Room 215)

Chair: Clara Pitocchi (University of Oxford)

Marina Pyrovolaki (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) Jesus as Word and Spirit in the Qur'an: Reframing Christology after Nicaea 

Martin Whittingham (Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies Oxford and Regent's Park College, Oxford) Muḥammad ʿAbduh and Rashīd Riḍā on the Bible 

Yasmin Ilkhani (AKU ISMC) The Inversion of Death Pollution in a Contemporary Zoroastrian Cemetery in Yazd, Iran 

Ivana Panzeca (University of Palermo) Reading Avicenna in Persian: translations and commentaries on the Kitāb al-Išārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt 

Islam, Authority, and Society in the Contemporary Gulf (Room 219)

Chair: Tom Lea (University of Edinburgh)

Fatima  Elhag (University of Oxford) Family Law in the Gulf: Gender Dynamics, Litigants' Strategies, and Socio-Legal Analysis of Qatar's Judicial Rulings 

Philippe Thalmann (University of Cambridge) Prophetic Landscapes: Salafi lives in post-oil Saudi Arabia 

Daniel Miller (University of Oxford) "Occupying the Holy Lands of Islam": Intra-Wahhabi Contestation over Non-Muslim Intervention in the Gulf War 

Islam, Secularism, and Political Authority (Room 220)

Chair: Tom Woener-Powell (University of Manchester)

Umar Shareef (Georgetown University) Revisiting the Islamic Secular 

Yahaya Halidu (The University of Texas at Austin) Islam, Modernity & The Crises of Secular Ideologies in Ghana 

Dietrich Reetz (Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient) Religious Governance and Socialist Ideals: Barkatullah's Pamphlet on "Islam and Socialist Body-Politic" in 1919 

Aneeq Ejaz (University of Texas at Austin) Sacralized Words, Enshrined Body: Pakistan's Founding Father between Scriptural Religion and Sacred Kingship    

Prophethood, Polemic, and Metaphysics in Sunni Kalām (Room ACR)

Chair: Stephen Burge (Institute of Ismaili Studies) 

Navid Chizari (Ibn Haldun University) The Rational Necessity of Prophethood in Classical Muslim Thought 

Ramon Harvey (Cambridge Muslim College) The Jagged Reed Pen Cuts Sharply: On al-Māturīdī's Lampoons of al-Kaʿbī 

Robbie Hoque (University of London) Cognitive Psychology and a Taymiyyan framework for a theory of divine mind. 

Davide Ravazzoni (University of Groningen) What Equals the Thing in the Souls: Ibn Taymiyya on Desire and Just Price in Commercial Exchange 

13.30-14.30: Lunch

14.30-16.00: Panel Session 6 

From Page to World: Materiality and Meaning in Arabic Manuscripts (Room 221)

Chair: Aslisho Qurboniev (Institute of Ismaili Studies) 

Sarah Bowen Savant, Mathew Barber, Lorenz Nigst, Masoumeh Seydi, and Peter Verkinderen  (AKU-ISMC): KITAB-Transform – Transforming the Story of the Arabic Book, 700–1800 

Jonas Burkhard (Yale University) The Many Lives of the Most Popular Arabic Manuscript World Map: Ibn al-Wardī's (d. 1457) Kharīdat al-ʿAjāʾib wa-Farīdat al-Gharāʾib 

Ahmad Arif Zulkefli (International Islamic University Malaysia) The Importance of Codicological Evidence in African Islamic Manuscript Traditions: A Case Study of Taqyīd fī Bayān Wazn al-Aʿmāl by Aḥmad ibn Mubārak al-Sijilmāsī (d. 1156/1743) 

Theology at the Limits of Reason: From Post-Classical Debates to AI (Room 220)

Chair: Mansur Ali (Cardiff University)

Amir Mohammad Emami (University of Exeter) Beyond Conception: Mīrzā Mahdī Iṣfahānī’s Critique of Conceptualising God in Islamic Philosophical Theology 

Azad Raouf Qazaz (KU Leuven) Zeroness (al-ṣifrāniyya) beyond Oneness (al-waḥdāniyya): A New Metaphor for Divine Transcendence 

Sofia Tsourlaki (SOAS) Islamic Liberation Theology in the Digital Age: Critical Reasoning, and AI-Mediated Religious Engagement.    

Exploring Qurʾānic Meaning: Stylistic and Theological Perspectives (Room 215)

Chair: Fozia Bora (University of Leeds)

Saf Chowdhury (Cambridge Muslim College) Balancing Revelation and Application: An Analysis of Shaykh ʿAlī al-Qaradāghī’s Fiqh al-Mīzān 

Amina Inloes (The Islamic College) Meteors in the Qur'an 

Muhammad Faisal Khalil (University of Oxford) Sūrat al-Baqarah: Redactional Layering or Prophetic Dramaturgy? An Apocalyptic-Stage Stylometric Adjudication 

Saeid Sobhani (Islamic college of London) The Glorification of All Beings in the Qurʾān: A Theological and Philosophical Study of Tasbīḥ 

Authority, Community, and Visibiltiy in Shiʿi and Alevi Contexts (Room 219)

Chair: Uzair Ibrahim (Univeristy of Exeter)

Carlos Mendez (University of Edinburgh) The Growing Mediated Visibility of Shi`ism and the (Co)Construction of a Renewed Shi`i Publicness 

Hossein Mousavi (Royal Holloway, University of London)  Were Shi’i Clerics Eurocentric in the 1920s? A Hermeneutic Challenge to the Definition of Eurocentrism in the Social Sciences 

Ufuk Erol (Leibniz Institute of European History) Producing Religious Authority: Sayyid Families, Genealogies and the Making of Alevi Religious Leadership 

British Muslim Experiences of Inclusion, Exclusion, and Solidarity (ACR) 

Chair: Haroon Sidat (Cardiff University)

Tasnim Idriss (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) Islamophobia on Social Media in the UK: Discursive Dynamics and Muslim Responses on X during the 2023 Gaza War 

Iman Dawood (London School of Economics & Political Science) Forging 'Unity' in Times of Peril: British Muslim Activism in the Era of Far-Right Politics 

Muhammed Tajri (Al-Mahdi Institute) The Practitioners' Predicament – Challenges in Caring for Clients on the Shia-LGB Nexus 

Muhammad Abbasi (Royal Holloway University of London) Legal Status of Unregistered Muslim Marriages (Nikāḥ) under English law 

16.00-16.30: Refreshments

16.30-18.00: Closing Keynote Session

Islamic Literary Heritage at the Institute of Ismaili Studies (ACR)

Dr Nourmamadcho Nourmamadchoev and Dr. Karim Javan (Ismaili Special Collections Unit The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London)

An opportunity to view some of the stunning manuscripts held by the Institute for Ismaili Studies with specialist insight from colleagues at the IIS Special Collections Unit.