Leiden University Centre for the Study of Islam and Society

Visiting fellows

Every semester, LUCIS invites a scholar to Leiden to provide a lecture series on a topic of their choice. With these lectures, we aim to present state-of-the-art research in Islamic studies to the Leiden academic community and beyond, and to offer students and junior researchers the opportunity to get to know scholars with an outstanding academic track record. The lectures are accompanied by five masterclasses for graduate students.

2020/2021	Maribel Fierro, Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas del Mediterráneo y Oriente Próximo	Culture and Society in the Medieval Islamic west: The Process of Islamization
Fall 2019	Geert Jan van Gelder, University of Oxford	Prominent Murder Victims in Pre- and Early Islamic Times
Spring 2019	Christian Müller, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique	Islamic Law
Fall 2018	Wadad Kadi, University of Chicago	Umayyad Epistolography
Spring 2018	Karen Bauer, Princeton University	The Emotion of Qur’anic Persuasion
Fall 2017	Mercedes Volait, Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris	Taking Things Seriously: Patterns of Art Consumption across the Modern Mediterranean
Spring 2017	Sarah Bowen Savant, SOAS, University of London	Knowledge, Information Technology, and the Arabic Book
Fall 2016	Wen-chin Ouyang, SOAS, University of London	Reading Arabic Literature in a Global Context
Spring 2016	Graham E. Fuller, former Vice Chair of the National Intelligence Council at CIA	Conflict, Islamist Extremism & Governance in the Middle East
Fall 2015	Camilla Adang, Tel Aviv University	Ibn Hazm of Cordoba and the Zahiri School of Law and Theology
Spring 2015	Hugh Kennedy, SOAS, University of London	Towards an Economic History of the Early Abbasid Caliphate (c. 700-950 CE)
Fall 2014	Angeliki Ziaka, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki	Ibadism and the Sultanate of Oman
Spring 2014	Ulrike Freitag, Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin	Approaching a Walled City: Perspectives in the Urban History of Jeddah
Spring 2013	Sabine Schmidtke, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton	The Doctrinal History of Imāmī Shiism: Four Case Studies
Fall 2012	Muhammad Khalid Masud	Fiqh as Social Construction
Spring 2012	Jørgen S. Nielsen, University of Copenhagen	Islam in Europe: A Challenge to Islam and Europe
Spring 2011	Marina Rustow, Johns Hopkins University	Politics, the Archive, and Power from Below in the Medieval Middle East
Fall 2010	Robert Gleave, University of Exeter	Hermeneutics, Power and Juristic Authority: Studies in the History of Shiʾi Muslim Law
Spring 2010	Robert Hoyland, New York University	The Arab Conquests and the Making of an Islamic Empire
Spring 2009	François Déroche, École pratique des hautes études	The Qurʾânic Manuscript in Umayyad Times

Short-stay visiting scholars

In addition, we invite scholars from abroad to spend a couple of days in Leiden to give a public lecture, participate in an interdisciplinary roundtable, and conduct a masterclass for a selected group of graduate students.

1-2 October 2019	Zakaria Rhani Revolutionizing the Genealogy: Charisma, Power, and Social Change in Morocco \| Political Violence and Process of Reconciliation in Morocco: the Power of Testimony and the Limits of Postcolonial Theory
6-7 June 2019	Reina Lewis Transnational Curation Politics: Contemporary Muslim Fashions
13-15 June 2017	Eva Troelenberg Mshatta and the Invention of “Islamic Art” as a Modern Concept \| Alternative Archaeologies, Multiple Agencies, Hidden Narratives \| Global Flows, Local Agencies, Significant Pasts: Perspectives in Museum History and contemporary Art
9-11 November 2016	Jürgen Paul Local and imperial rule in Fars in the 9th and 10th centuries \| Khidma \| the assumed dichotomy between the nomadic and sedentary worlds
28-30 September 2016	Salim Tamari Autobiographical Narratives in the Great War \| Ottoman and colonial modernities in the transformation of the urban sphere during the Mandate period \| working with diaries in research
18-20 March 2015	Nile Green From Evangelical Empires to Global Islam: Mosques, Missions and Religious Economies \| Modelling Religion for Global Historians \| Agents in Religious Networks
30-31 October 2014	Jonathan Brown The Role of Scripture in Contemporary Muslim Politics \| The Challenge of Equity and Justice in the Shariah \| Who Owns the Canon?