Building Bridges Seminar

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.

Seyed Amir Akrami is an Iranian scholar with research interests that include​Islamic philosophy and interreligious relations. Currently based at the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies (Tehran), he was a visiting professor at the Eastern Mennonite University Center for Interfaith Engagement from 2012 to 2015. He has also been a lecturer at the Al-Mahdi Institute in Birmingham, United Kingdom, and a member of the Iranian Institute of Philosophy. Akrami holds a B.A. in Islamic studies, M.A. in religion and mysticism, and Ph.D. in the philosophy of religion.

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.

Najib George Awad, a theologian and poet originally from Syria, is professor of Christian theology and Eastern Christian thought at Hartford Seminary; he is also director of its Ph.D. program in Islamic studies and Christian-Muslim relations. His research interests include systematic theology, the doctrine of the Trinity, theology of religions, contextual theology, Arabic Christianity and Christian-Muslim relations, and Oriental/Arab Christianity, particularly the early Christian-Muslim kalam of the early Muslim (Umayyad and Abbasid) era. He publishes in both Arabic and English. His works in English include God without Face? On the Personal Individuation of the Holy Spirit (2011); And Freedom Became a Public-Square: Political, Sociological and Religious Overviews on the Arab Christians and the Arabic Spring (2012); Orthodoxy in Arabic Terms: A Study of Theodore Abū Qurrah’s Trinitarian and Christological Doctrines in an Islamic Context (2015); and Umayyad Christianity: John of Damascus as a Contextual Example of Identity Formation in Early Islam (2018). He earned his M.A. and D.Phil. in systematic theology from King’s College, University of London, and D.Th. (habilitation) in historical/Oriental theology from Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany.

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.

Richard Bauckham is Senior Scholar at Cambridge University's Ridley Hall. A wide-ranging theologian and New Testament scholar, his work has focused on New Testament Christology and the Gospel of John, the theology of Jürgen Moltmann, the Jewish context of the New Testament, and the Bible and contemporary issues (including ecology). Until his 2007 retirement he was professor of New Testament studies and Bishop Wardlaw Professor at the University of St. Andrews, United Kingdom. A prolific author, his publications include Gospel of Glory: Major Themes in Johannine Theology (2015), The Bible in the Contemporary World (2015), Bible and Ecology: Rediscovering the Community of Creation (2010); The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple: Narrative, History, and Theology in the Gospel of John (2007), Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (2006), God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament (1998), and The Theology of the Book of Revelation (1993). He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge.

Yousef Casewit is assistant professor of Qur'anic studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His research interests include the intellectual history of North Africa and al-Andalus, Muslim perceptions of the Bible, and medieval commentaries on the 99 divine names. Previously, he was a Humanities Research Fellow at New York University Abu Dhabi and an assistant professor of Arabic intellectual heritage and culture at the American University of Sharjah. His publications include a critical edition of a Qur’an commentary by Ibn Barrajan of Seville (2016) and The Mystics of al-Andalus: Ibn Barrajān and Islamic Thought in the Twelfth Century (2017). He is also preparing a translation and critical edition of a Sufi philosophical commentary on the divine names by the Algerian scholar ‘Afif al-Din al-Tilimsani. Casewit earned his Ph.D. in Islamic studies from Yale University.