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.

Akintunde Akinade is professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar. Before coming to Georgetown University, he taught courses in comparative religions, Christian thought, and Christian-Muslim relations at High Point University in High Point, North Carolina, for 12 years. He has also taught at Wesleyan University, College of New Rochelle, and New York Theological Seminary. Akinade serves on the editorial board of The Muslim World, Religions/Adyan, Trinity Journal of Church and Theology, and The Living Pulpit. He is also the book review editor for the Journal of World Christianity. Within the American Academy of Religion, he serves on the Committee on the Status of Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Profession. He earned his B.A. in Religious Studies from Obafemi Awolowo University, M.Div. from Southern Methodist University, and M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

Afifi al-Akiti is KFAS Fellow in Islamic Studies and Islamic Centre lecturer in Islamic studies at the Faculty of Theology, University of Oxford, as well as college lecturer in world religions at Oxford's Worcester College. His areas of expertise are Islamic theology, philosophy, and science, while his research interests include the works of al-Ghazali, medieval Arabic manuscripts and Moroccan religious lithographs (Hajariyyat), medieval Islamic astronomy (‘ilm al-falak), and Islamic law, primarily the Shafi‘i school. The assistant editor of the Journal of Islamic Studies, he has also been a visiting professor of Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. In 2010 he was made a board member of the Perak Islamic Religious Council in Malaysia, and in 2012, he was elected into the Royal and Privy Council of the Malaysian state, the Dewan Negara, constitutionally as a life peer. Since 2010, he has been listed in The Muslim 500: The World’s 500 Most Influential Muslims.

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.

Betül Avcı is an associate professor of religious studies at Ibn Haldun University in Istanbul. Her academic research includes comparative theology, Christian-Muslim relations, cultural-religious translation, and alternative contemporary spiritualities. She is currently working on an oral history project on her family between the Late Ottoman and Early Republican eras, a monograph on Christian-Muslim relations, as well as an edited book on alternative spiritualities in contemporary Turkey. She holds a Doctor of Sacred Theology degree from the Pontifical Gregorian University.

The Revd. Dr. Sunil M. Caleb is the principal of Bishop’s College, Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Caleb has taught Christian theology and Christian ethics there for almost two decades. He is also an ordained presbyter of the Church of North India.

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.