Shahab Ahmed was most recently Associate Professor of Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, holding a joint appointment in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and the Committee on the Study of Religion. He received his primary schooling in Singapore, his secondary schooling in the UK, and attended university in Malaysia, Egypt and the USA. He first came to Harvard in 2000 as a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, and was subsequently appointed to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 2005. He has just completed book manuscript entitled What is Islam? An Essay on the Importance of Being Islamic (an attempt at conceptualizing Islam as a theoretical object and analytical category). He is currently working on two other books, Neither Paradise Nor Hellfire: Rethinking Islam through Ottoman Culture/Rethinking Ottoman Culture through Islam (about the nature of normative Islam in seventeenth-century Ottoman society; co-authored with Nenad Filipovic), and The Problem of the Satanic Verses and the Formation of Islamic Orthodoxy (a history of the attitudes of Muslims towards the Satanic verses incident from the seventh century down to the present day).

In addition to being an ILSP Visiting Fellow, Ahmed will hold the position of Lecturer on Law, teaching the course Orthodoxy: Truth, Authority, Law.

Office: MZ216
Office Phone: 617-496-3622
E-mail: [email protected]

Dörthe Engelcke is finalizing her DPhil at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. Her dissertation examines reform processes in Arab monarchies with specific focus on Islamic family law reform in Morocco and Jordan. It brings together the study of authoritarianism, legal reform, and gender and is based on 11 months of research in Morocco and Jordan. Prior to coming to Oxford she completed an MA in Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London (SOAS). She also studied Middle Eastern Studies, law, and psychology at the University of Hamburg in Germany and at INALCO in Paris. During her PhD, Dörthe has taught Middle East Politics at Oxford, and was a visiting fellow at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg.

In addition to her PhD, Dörthe’s ongoing research examines party identification in the MENA and custody regulations. She most recently published on Moroccan Islamists in the Arab Spring, and is a contributor to the forthcoming Brill Encyclopedia of Law and Religion. She is currently also working on a project that traces the concept of the best interest of the child in the legal system of Jordan which is part of a wider project organized and coordinated by the Max Planck Working Group on Child Law in Muslim Countries.

Office: MZ215
Office Phone: 617-495-0580
E-mail: [email protected]