Building Bridges Seminar

Muhammad Modassir Ali is an assistant professor at the Muhammad Bin Hamad Al Thani Center for Muslim Contribution to Civilization in Hamad Bin Khalifa University's College of Islamic Studies. His academic interests include Islamic studies, ancient and medieval philosophy, spirituality, Hinduism, Christianity, and sira. Ali previously was a teaching assistant and assistant dean of student affairs at the Qatar University College of Sharia & Islamic Studies and an assistant professor and head of the Department of Comparative Religion at International Islamic University Islamabad. His master's degree dissertation for that institution was entitled “The Concept of Revelation and Prophecy in Hinduism: A Critical Study.” He also completed his Ph.D. at International Islamic University Islamabad, where his dissertation was on "The Catholic Concept of Revelation since the Second Vatican Council and its Impact on the Christian View of the ‘Other’.”

Ahmet Alibašić is assistant professor in the Faculty of Islamic Studies at the University of Sarejevo, where he teaches Islamic culture and civilization courses. His doctorate, completed at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Sarajevo, focused on Islamic opposition in the Arab world. He is the director of the Center for Advanced Studies, Sarajevo, a senior associate of the Democratization Policy Council, and chairman of Gazi Husrev-bey Library. He is one of the editors of Yearbook of Muslims in Europe (2009–2013) and Journal of Muslims in Europe. From 2003 to 2007 he served as deputy president of the Association of Islamic Scholars in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Ovamir Anjum is Imam Khattab Endowed Chair of Islamic Studies at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Toledo. His work is interdisciplinary, focusing on the nexus of theology, ethics, politics, and law in classical and medieval Islam, with comparative interest in Western thought; he also studies contemporary issues such as developments in Islamic political thought in the wake of the Arab Uprisings of 2011. He is the author of Politics, Law and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment (2012); and is near completion of a translation of a popular Islamic spiritual and theological classic, Madarij al-Salikin (Ranks of Divine Seekers) by Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 1351). He holds a Ph.D. in Islamic intellectual history from University of Wisconsin-Madison, with master's degrees in social sciences from the University of Chicago and in computer science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Mehdi Azaiez is a professor of Islamic studies at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCLouvain) in Belgium. He also manages a website dedicated to Qur’anic studies. Previously, he was an instructor on Islamic studies and co-director of the Qur’an Seminar, an international project based at the University of Notre Dame. He is a member of the publications and research committee of the International Qur’anic Studies Association, a scientific member of the Bulletin Critique des Annales Islamologiques, and an associate researcher at the Institute for Islamic and Muslim World Studies (Institute de Recherches et d’Etudes sur le Monde Musulman). His publications include Le contre-discours coranique (2015). Azaiez holds a Ph.D. in Islamic studies from the University of Aix-Marseille.

Maria Clara Lucchetti Bingemer is a professor of the Theology Department of Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and works in the area of systematic theology. Her teaching focuses on the themes of fundamental theology and the mystery of God. Her research focuses on the writings of contemporary mystics. Her articles and books have been published in several languages, including The Mystery and the World (2013); Simone Weil: Mystique of Passion and Compassion (2014); Latin American Theology: Roots and Branches (2017); and Mysticism and Testimony in Koinonia (2018). She is vice president of the Brazilian Society of Theology and Science of Religion and the Latin American Association of Literature and Theology of Brazil.

Jonathan A.C. Brown is the Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where he is also the director of the Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding. His current research focuses on Islamic legal reform and a translation of Sahih al-Bukhari. He previously taught a class supported through the Berkley Center's Doyle Seminars project. His book publications include Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenges and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet's Legacy (2014), Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction (2011), Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World (2009), and The Canonization of al-Bukhari and Muslim: The Formation and Function of the Sunni Hadith Canon (2007). Brown has published articles in the fields of hadith, Islamic law, Sufism, Arabic lexical theory, and pre-Islamic poetry and is the editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Islamic Law. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Brown received his B.A. from Georgetown University and his doctorate from the University of Chicago.

Lejla Demiri is Chair of Islamic Doctrine at the Center for Islamic Theology, University of Tübingen. Her research interests include the history of Islamic theology, Islam and religious pluralism, Christian-Muslim theological interactions, Ottoman intellectual history, and Islamic manuscripts. She holds a B.A. and M.A. from Marmara University (Istanbul), licentiate degree and postgraduate diploma from the Pontifical Gregorian University (Rome), and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. She held postdoctoral fellowships at Trinity Hall, Cambridge (2007–2010) and the Free University of Berlin (2010-2012). She is the author of Muslim Exegesis of the Bible in Medieval Cairo (2013). She also serves as team leader (Middle East and North Africa) and section editor (Turkish world) for the CMR1900 project: Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History (1500–1900) (2012–present) and publishes extensively on theological and interfaith matters.

Susan Eastman is an associate research professor emerita of the New Testament at Duke Divinity School. Her scholarly focus is on Paul’s letters in conversation with issues of personhood in science and philosophy. She is the author of Recovering Paul’s Mother Tongue: Language and Theology in Galatians (2007; 2nd edition 2022), Paul and the Person: Reframing Paul’s Anthropology (2017), the forthcoming Commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans (Interpretation Commentary series), and Oneself in Another: Participation and Personhood in Pauline Theology (forthcoming), as well as numerous articles and conference papers. She is also ordained in the Episcopal Church. Eastman holds a B.A. from Pomona College, M.Div. from Yale Divinity School, and Ph.D. from Duke University.