Building Bridges Seminar

Catherine Cornille is a professor and Newton College Alumnae Chair of Western Culture in the Theology Department at Boston College. She is the author of numerous publications including The Im-Possibility of Interreligious Dialogue (2008) and Meaning and Method in Comparative Theology (2019).

Tuba Işik is a professor of Islamic education and practical theology in the Berlin Institute of Islamic Theology at Humboldt University in Berlin. Her research interests include religious education and its pedagogy, virtue ethics, Muslim women, and comparative theology. Işik is the author of Systematic and Historical Reflections on the Meaning of the Prophet Muḥammad for Religious Education (2015) and a monograph on character cultivation from a philosophical point of view (forthcoming, 2022). She is a co-editor of the first textbook in German on the didactics of Islamic religious education (2022). Işik holds a master’s degree in international public law and pedagogy from Georg-August University of Göttingen (Germany) and a Ph.D. from the University of Paderborn, Germany. She also studied Catholic theology in Paderborn and Rome and received further education in Islamic education at the University of Osnabrück and the Ilahiyat Faculties of Bursa and Ankara in Turkey.

Rev. Daniel Madigan, S.J., is the Matteo Ricci Professor of Interreligious Theology and director of the Loyola Institute at Australian Catholic University. He is also rector of Newman College at the University of Melbourne. From 2008 to 2021 he was the Jeanette W. and Otto J. Ruesch Family Associate Professor in Georgetown University’s Department of Theology and Religious Studies; he continues to be a faculty fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and associate professor emeritus at Georgetown. He has been involved with the annual Building Bridges Seminar since 2003 and in 2012 was appointed chair. His interests include Qur’anic studies, interreligious dialogue, and comparative theology, with a special focus on Muslim-Christian relations. Madigan previously taught in Rome (2000-2007), where he was the founder and director of the Pontifical Gregorian University's Institute for the Study of Religions and Cultures. He is the author of The Qur’an’s Self-Image: Writing and Authority in Islam’s Scripture (2001) and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to the Qur’an (2022). Madigan holds a B.A. from Monash University, B.D. from Melbourne College of Divinity, and M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Joshua Ralston is Reader in Christian-Muslim Relations at the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh and director and co-founder of the Christian-Muslim Studies Network funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. He has published widely on Reformed Theology, Christian theological engagements with Islam, Arab Christianity, and on political theology. His monograph, Law and the Rule of God: A Christian Engagement with Shari'a was published by Cambridge University Press (2020). Prior to moving to Scotland, he was Assistant Professor of Theology at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. He earned his undergraduate degree in philosophy at Wake Forest University, before going on to study World Christianity at Edinburgh (MTh with distinction), divinity at Candler School of Theology (MDiv), and Christian Theology and Islamic Thought at Emory University. 

Abdullah Saeed is the Sultan of Oman Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Melbourne. He is also director of the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies—a cooperative initiative of the University of Melbourne, University of Western Sydney, and Griffith University—and co-director of Melbourne's Centre for Islamic Law and Society. His publications address Qur’anic hermeneutics, Islam and human rights, Islamic law reform, Islamic finance, Muslim communities in Australia, and Islam and freedom of religion. His publications include Reading the Qur'an in the Twenty-First Century: A Contextualist Approach (2013), The Qur’an: an Introduction (2008) and Freedom of Religion, Apostasy and Islam (2004). He was made a member of the Order of Australia in 2013. Born in the Maldives, Saeed received his B.A. in Arab/Islamic studies from the Islamic University in Saudi Arabia and his Ph.D. in Islamic studies from the University of Melbourne.