BRAIS 2025: Annual Conference of the British Association for Islamic Studies

Call for Papers
Date: June 30-July 1, 2025 
Venue: Old Divinity School, St John’s College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Abstract Submission Deadline: January 5, 2024

The British Association for Islamic Studies (BRAIS) is delighted to announce that it will be hosting its 2025 Annual Conference at the University of Cambridge, in the historic surroundings of the Old Divinity School at St John’s College. We extend our sincere thanks to our colleagues at the Centre of Islamic Studies, University of Cambridge, for making this possible.

2025 will mark the tenth anniversary of BRAIS’s Annual Conference, with the first taking place at the University of Edinburgh back in 2014.

Organizers invite scholars from across the many sub-disciplines of Islamic Studies to share their latest research. They invite proposals for individual papers, as well as whole panels, from senior and early-career scholars from Professor to PhD level, as well as colleagues from beyond the academic world who have specialist expertise or unique insights to share. This includes colleagues based in centers of further education, museums and traditional centers of religious learning, among others.

​​Islamic Studies is broadly understood to include all topics and disciplinary approaches relating to the study of Islam and Muslim societies, across all time periods from the formative to the classical, and pre-modern to the contemporary. You will find a list of suggested themes at the bottom of this page.

BRAIS 2025 Suggested Themes

• Archives and Archival Studies
• Art, Architecture, Numismatics, Epigraphy and Material Culture
• Black Islam(s) and African Diaspora Studies
• Decolonizing the Curriculum, including New Periodization and (Inter)Disciplinary Approaches
• Digital Humanities in Islamic Studies
• Economy, Marketing and Finance
• Education and Pedagogy
• Environmental Humanities and Ecology
• Gender Studies
• Genocide Studies
• Hadith Studies
• History and Historiography
• Intellectual History and the History of Science
• Interreligious Relations and Comparative Studies
• Islam and Muslims in the Media: Print, Online and on Screen
• Islamic liberation theology and theologies of resistance
• Law
• Libraries and Book Cultures
• Literature and Cultural Studies including Postcolonial Studies
• Manuscript Studies and Codicology
• Music
• Muslims in Asia
• Muslims in Britain/Europe/North America and other minority contexts
• Philosophy, Theology and Ethics
• Qur’anic and Tafsir Studies
• Scholasticide and Epistemicide
• Sociology, Anthropology and Political Science
• Sufism and Mysticism

Please feel free to submit panel or paper proposals that are not represented in the above-mentioned themes.

Submitting Papers

For individual papers, a 200-word abstract of the paper should be submitted along with your details using the form via this link.

Submitting Panel Proposals

BRAIS particularly welcomes proposals for whole panels curated around certain themes or methodologies. Panels will ideally include four individual papers, but panels of three individual papers will also be considered. For panels, a 200-word outline of the theme of the panel, together with 200-word abstracts of each individual paper and the biography of each presenter should be submitted using the form available via this link.

The deadline for paper and panel submissions is Sunday 5 January 2025 at 11:59pm GMT. If you have any questions, please contact the Conference Committee on: brais.conference@ed.ac.uk

Founded in 2013, BRAIS is a learned society and professional organisation focused on enhancing research and teaching about Islam and Muslim cultures and societies in UK higher education. BRAIS’ Management Hub is currently based at the Alwaleed Centre for the Study of Islam in the Contemporary World at the University of Edinburgh.

More information on: The British Association for Islamic Studies