Notes on Contributors
Taira Amin
completed an interdisciplinary PhD in Applied Linguistics at Lancaster University. Her research encompasses linguistic and discursive methods, gender construction and QurʾÄnic Studies. Working under the supervision of Ruth Wodak, a pioneer in the field of Critical Discourse Studies and Shuruq Naguib, a leading scholar in Islamic Studies, her research involves exploring gender constructions in QurʾÄnic narratives and their interpretation in the Muslim exegetical tradition. She holds an MA in Language Studies and a BA in English Language and Literature.
Halla Attallah
is Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University where she defended her dissertation, âGender and (In)fertility in the QurʾÄnâs Annunciation Type-Scenes,â in April 2023. She specializes in literary QurʾÄnic, gender, and disability studies. Her work focuses on the QurʾÄnâs narrative material, attending to the intricate and complicated ways in which various stories are employed by different sÅ«ras. She is interested in both the QurʾÄnâs engagement with storytelling and how these stories use various bodies to establish central theological goals. Her current and forthcoming publications include, âAbraham and His Family.â In The Routledge Companion of the Qurʾan (co-authored with George Archer), and âThe Birth of Jesus in the Qurʾan.â In Son of Mary: Jesus in the Qurʾan and Muslim Thought.
Bilal Badat
is Senior Researcher at Barker Langham and a visiting researcher at the University of Tübingen. He is archaeologist and art historian by training specializing in the history of Islamic calligraphy. He completed his MA degree in Islamic art and archaeology at the University of Oxford and wrote his doctorate on the concept of pedagogy and style in Islamic calligraphy at the Princeâs School of Traditional Arts. To support his research, he studied calligraphy in Istanbul for over five years under master calligrapher Efdaluddin Kılıç, obtaining his calligraphic license, or ijÄza, in the thuluth and naskh scripts in 2017. He was the principal investigator in an AIWG-funded project entitled âBeauty and Islamic Theologyâ (2020â2021), which aimed to explore the rich and diverse relationships between theology, art, and aesthetics in the Islamic world. He has lectured on Islamic art and architecture at the University of St. Andrews and the University of Tübingen, where he taught modules on Islamic art and architecture, ethics, and aesthetics.
Fatih ErmiÅ
is Research Associate at the Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB). He received a doctorate from the University of Erfurt in 2011 with a thesis entitled âOttoman Economic Thinking before the 19th Century.â He holds an MA in economic history from Marmara University and a BA in economics from BoÄaziçi University, both in Istanbul. His main research interest is pre-modern Islamic intellectual history, with a particular focus on intellectual activity in the Ottoman Empire. His studies are concerned with economic, social, religious and literary writing and with Sufi thought. He has published among others A History of Ottoman Economic Thought: Developments Before the Nineteenth Century, Routledge, 2014; and Rosenflor des Geheimnisses, Peter Lang Verlag, 2017.
Mohammad Fadel
is Professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on Islamic legal history, Islamic law reform, Islam and liberalism, and political theory. He has translated ShihÄb al-DÄ«n al-QarÄfÄ«âs (d. 684/1285) al-IḥkÄm fÄ« TamyÄ«z al-FatÄwÄ Ê¿an al-AḥkÄm wa-Taá¹£arrufÄt al-QÄdÄ« wa-l-ImÄm [The Criterion for Distinguishing Legal Opinions from Judicial Rulings and the Administrative Acts of Judges and Rulers, Yale University Press, 2017], for which he received second prize in the Arabic to English category of the Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding, 2019. He was also co-translator of al-Muwaá¹á¹aʾ, the Royal Moroccan Edition: the Recension of YaḥyÄ Ibn YaḥyÄ al-LaythÄ«, Harvard University Press, 2019.
Hannelies Koloska
is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Among her publications are the monograph Offenbarung, Ãsthetik und Koranexegese: Zwei Studien zu Sure 18 (al-Kahf), Harrasowitz, 2015 and the first German translation of Ibn al-JawzÄ«âs (d. 597/ 1201) widely-adopted treatise about Muslim women, AḥkÄm al-NisÄʾ including considerable annotations. She is currently running an international research project on vision and visuality in Early Islam. She researches aspects of visuality in the QurʾÄn and Early Islamic exegesis and the interrelation between different media such as texts and images in Early Islam.
Samer Rashwani
is Senior Researcher at the Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CILE), Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) in Doha. He has published a monograph on Manhaj al-TafsÄ«r al-Mawá¸Å«Ê¿Ä« lil-QurʾÄn al-KarÄ«m: DirÄsa Naqdiyya (âThe Methodology of Thematic Interpretation of the QurʾÄn: A Critical Review,â DÄr al-MultaqÄ, 2009), in addition to several edited volumes and articles on QurʾÄnic and Islamic Studies.
Emmanuelle Stefanidis
is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Nantes in the ERC synergy project âThe European QurʾÄn: Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion (1150â1850).â She holds a PhD in Arabic Studies from Sorbonne Université (2019). Her research focuses on the QurʾÄn and tafsÄ«r, as well as their reception in Europe from early modern times to the present.
Devin J. Stewart
is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Emory University. He obtained his BA from Princeton University in 1984 and his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991. His research interests include ShÄ«Ê¿Ä« Islam and the QurʾÄn, and he has published the article âSajÊ¿ in the QurʾÄn: Prosody and Structure.â Journal of Arabic Literature 21 (1990); âWansbrough, Bultmann, and the Theory of Variant Traditions in the QurʾÄn.â In Qurʾanic Studies Today (2016); âReflections on the State of the Art in Western QurʾÄnic Studies.â In Islam and Its Past: Jahiliyya, Late Antiquity, and the Qurʾan (2017); âNoahâs Boat and Other Missed Opportunities.â Journal of the International Qurʾanic Studies Association 6 (2021); âApproaches to the Investigation of Speech Genres in the QurʾÄn.â Journal of Qurʾanic Studies 24/1 (2022); and âQurʾÄnic Periphrases for the Sake of Rhyme and Rhythm and the Periphrastic Use of Kull.â The Journal of Near Eastern Studies 82/2 (2023), among other studies.