Building Bridges Seminar

Muhammad A. S. Abdel Haleem is the King Fahd Professor of Islamic Studies and director of the Centre for Islamic Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies of London University, as well as editor of the Journal of Qur’anic Studies. Born in Egypt, he learned the Qur’an by heart during childhood. Haleem has published two translations of the Qur'an: The Qur'an: English Translation with Parallel Arabic Text (2010) and The Qur'an: A New Translation (2004). He has also published several other works in this field, including Understanding the Qur’an: Themes and Style (2001) and, together with Elsaid M. Badawi, Arabic-English Dictionary of Qur’anic Usage (2008).

Asma Afsaruddin is a professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University, Bloomington. She specializes in the religious and political thought of Islam, Qur’an and hadith, Islamic intellectual history, and gender. In addition to numerous articles, her books include Contemporary Issues in Islam (2015); Striving in the Path of God: Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought and Praxis (2013); Islam, the State and Political Authority: Medieval Issues and Modern Concerns (2011); and The First Muslims: History and Memory (2008). Afsaruddin is a member of the academic council of Georgetown's Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and of the American Academy of Liberal Education's board of trustees. She has received research funding from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York, which named her a Carnegie Scholar in 2005. Afsaruddin earned her Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University and previously taught at the University of Notre Dame and Harvard University.

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.

The Rev'd. Canon Professor Richard A. Burridge is a biblical scholar, ethicist, theologian, and social commentator who has published over a dozen books and hundreds of other articles or publications. During his career, he has been a schoolmaster, parish priest, university chaplain, academic, and professor, and he served as dean of King’s College London from 1993 to 2019. After leaving London, Burridge became a research fellow in the Department of Theology at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom and is also a visiting professor at Virginia Theological Seminary in the United States. He is the author of many books, including the groundbreaking What are the Gospels? (1992/2004/2018), for which Pope Francis gave him the 2013 Ratzinger Prize, the first non-Roman Catholic to receive this international award for theological scholarship. Other publications include Four Gospels, One Jesus? (1995/2004/2013) and Imitating Jesus: an Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics (2007); his book Holy Communion in Contagious Times (2022) examines the Eucharist and the digital online world during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gavin D’Costa is professor of Catholic theology at the University of Bristol, where he has taught since 1993. He advises the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and in 1998 was visiting professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome. D'Costa's publications include Vatican II: Catholic Doctrines on Jews and Muslims (2014), Christianity and World Religions: Disputed Questions in the Theology of Religions (2009), The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity (2000), and Theology and Religious Pluralism (1986). Born in Kenya, he came to England in 1968 and completed a first degree in English and theology at Birmingham University. He studied at the University of Cambridge for his doctorate on John Hick’s theology of religions and then taught in London.

Revd. Dr. Valentin Dedji is minister at Edmonton Methodist Church, London, and also regularly teaches in Benin, his birthplace. He previously was minister in charge at St Mark’s Methodist Church, Tottenham, London. He trained at the Faculty of Theology, University of Yaoundé (Cameroon), in 1987 and was ordained as a Methodist minster in 1993 in Porto-Novo, Benin. In 1999 he completed a doctorate in systematic theology at the University of Cambridge entitled “Paradigm Shifts in African Theological Debates: From Liberation to Reconstruction.”

John J. DeGioia is the forty-eighth president of Georgetown University. For nearly four decades, DeGioia has worked to define and strengthen Georgetown University as a premier institution for education and research. As the first lay president of a Jesuit university he places emphasis on sustaining and strengthening Georgetown’s Catholic and Jesuit identity and its responsibility to serve as a voice and an instrument for justice. He has also been an advocate for interreligious dialogue. He continues to teach an Ignatius Seminar each fall, part of a program offering first year students the opportunity to encounter unique courses of study inspired by the Jesuit educational theme of cura personalis (“care for the whole person”). He is a member of the Order of Malta, a lay religious order of the Roman Catholic Church dedicated to serving the sick and the poor. Before becoming president, DeGioia served at Georgetown as senior vice president, responsible for university-wide operations, and dean of student affairs. DeGioia earned his B.A. and Ph.D at Georgetown University.

Brandon Gallaher is a senior lecturer of systematic and comparative theology in the University of Exeter's Department of Theology and Religion; he also serves as the Orthodox associate chaplain in Exeter's Multi-Faith Chaplaincy. Previously, he was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford. During the spring of 2014, he was a fellow of the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Advanced Study, where his research focused on secularism, politics, and the episcopate in modern Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. He is the author of Freedom and Necessity in Modern Trinitarian Theology (2016) and The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky: Essential Writings (2018, edited with Paul Ladouceur). Gallaher holds an M.A. from McGill University, M.Div. from St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, and M.St. and D.Phil. from Oxford University.