Chairpeople
Ayşe Almila Akca heads the Junior research group “Islamic Theology in context: scholarship and society” at the Berlin Institute for Islamic Theology at Humboldt-University Berlin. She received her PhD from the Institute of Islamic Studies/Freie Universität Berlin in 2018. Her ethnographic study on negotiations of Islamic knowledge, tradition and religious authority in mosques in Germany was awarded with the DAVO Dissertation Award 2019: Moscheeleben in Deutschland. Eine Ethnographie zu Islamischen Wissen, Tradition und religiöser Autorität (transcript publishing Bielefeld, 2020, Open Access). She was a research fellow at the Catholic Academy of Rottenburg-Stuttgart and at the Georg-Eckert-Institute for International Textbook Research in Braunschweig. She conducted researches on Christian-Muslim relations, gender issues, Islamic fields in Europe and Near East, Islamic knowledge in modernity, and religious authority and canonization processes. Following a practice-theory approach her recent research projects include various religious practices of Muslims in Western societies such as fasting, celebrating religious festivities, and ecological practices.
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Bahattin Akyol, born and raised in Haan near Düsseldorf, is a research associate with the professorship for Islamic Foundations of Faith, Philosophy and Ethics at the Berlin Institute for Islamic Theology at the Humboldt University in Berlin. He received his Bachelor's degree in Islamic Theology and his Master's degree in Islamic Law from the Faculty of Theology at Marmara University in Istanbul. The theme of his doctoral thesis is the ethical thought of the scholar Abū l-Ḥasan al-Māwardī. In addition, he also teaches Islamic Law and Ethics at BIT. His studies contribute to the conception of a research field of "Islamic Ethics" within Islamic Theology.
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Mohammad Gharaibeh is Professor for Islamic Intellectual History at the Berlin Institute for Islamic Theology of the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. His research includes both the Modern and Pre-Modern periods with special regard to the Intellectual History of Islam, including Islamic Theology, Ḥadīṯ Studies, Historiography and Sufism. In his PhD thesis he analyzed the theological thought of the Saudi Wahhābī scholar Ibn ʿUṯaymīn (d. 2001) regarding the divine attributes. His habilitation thesis deals with the commentarial tradition of Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s Muqaddima in the Ayyūbid and Mamluk periods from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge. He also works on the Arabic historiography of this period with a narratological approach.
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Yemima Hadad holds the Juniorprofessur für Judaistik at the University of Leipzig. Dr. Hadad teaches Modern Jewish Thought, German-Jewish Philosophy, and Rabbinic Literature. She is a research Fellow at the Bucerius Institute for Research of German Contemporary History and Society at the University of Haifa. Her research interests focus on Modern Jewish Thought, Continental Philosophy, political-theology and Feminism and 20th-Century Jewish Thought.
Her dissertation, which she completed at Potsdam University demonstrates the significance of Hasidism in explaining the political tenets of Martin Buber's thought.
She was a recipient of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes scholarship (2019/2020) and was a fellow at the Leo Baeck Institute (2018/2019) and the Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center (2017/2018). She is currently working on a book on the weak God in Jewish sources and modern Philosophy.
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Zahiye Kundos is a literary scholar, specializing in modern Islam, Arabic literature and the critique of modernity. She is completing her first book: In the Name of God we Will be Modern (Once Again): The Re-Religious Turn of Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī and Muhammad ʿAbduh and the Critique of European Modernity. In her current project, ‘The Afterlife of Muhammad ʿAbduh in Arabic Literature,’ which focuses on the Egyptian canon, Kundos demonstrates the influence of modern religious reforms on the development of Arabic literature. She is a member of the editorial advisory board at Political Theology Beyond, a public scholarship project from the journal Political Theology. She is a fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin, with the support of the Minerva Foundation.
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Serdar Kurnaz is Professor for Islamic Law at the Berlin Institute for Islamic Law at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He studied Islamic Theology, jewish-christian Studies and Padagogy at Goethe-University in Frankfurt. After working at the Goethe-University, he held different posts at the Universities of Fribourg and Hamburg. His research interests are Islamic law and legal theory, Quranic Studies, Quranic exegesis, Hadith studies, Islamic Ethics, Philosophy of law, epistemology and hermneutics.
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Esma Ünsal (27), born in Vienna, Bachelor of Arts in Islamic Theology (2018 Ankara University) and Master of Arts in Philosophy of Religion (2021 Goethe University Frankfurt). Currently PhD-student and research assistant at the Berlin Institute for Islamic Theology at the professorship for Comparative Theology in an Islamic Perspective.
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More to follow!