The Centre for the Study of Islam, based in the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, brings together the core teaching staff in Islamic Studies, other staff who have an interest in Islamic culture and civilization, and all interested postgraduate students (at MA and PhD level).

We sponsor visiting speakers in Islamic Studies, hold regular workshops and conferences, and convene the CSI Lunchtime Seminar (which takes place on Wednesdays alternate weeks during term time).  At our lunchtime seminars, we regularly hold Arabic text reading sessions.  Text session attendees should be aware that competence in reading classical Arabic and Islamic texts in Arabic is assumed; attendees receive a copy of the Arabic text one week in advance of the class (by pdf email attachment) and are expected to have read the text before attending.

Current Research Projects

The CSI brings together existing research projects including:

• Understanding Shari’a: Past Perfect/Imperfect Present – This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 649307. Postdoctoral research fellow: Dr Sejad Mekic.
• Law and Learning in Imami Shi’ite Islam (LAWALISI) – A 5 year project funded by the European Research Council. Postdoctoral research fellow: Dr Paul Gledhill.
• Islam and water management in a changing climate: building ‘faith-based evidence’ – a six-month project, funded by the GCRF Facilitation Fund, examining religious engagement with climate change in the Muslim world, with a focus on Tunisia, and in collaboration with Institut des Régions Arides (Tunis) and the Centre for Water Systems (Exeter). Postdoctoral research fellow: Dr Davide Pettinato

Past Research Projects

• Understanding Religion and Law: Fatwas Muftis and Law in British Islam 2015-2017
• Islamic Reformulations project: Belief, Violence, Governance 2013-2016
• The Sharia Project (2011-2013)
• Legitimate and Illegitimate Violence in Islamic Thought 2010-2013
• Contextualising Islam in Britain (a joint project with Cambridge and Westminster universities)
• The Hawza project on culture and learning in Shi’ite Islam (2009-2013)

Read more at: University of Exeter

The role of empirical research in the study of religion has become increasingly important in recent years. In the discipline of Religious Studies, more postgraduate students are undertaking field-work based projects, and in other social science disciplines there has been a renewed interest in religion as an area of study. There have been relatively few resources available however to support methodological training in this specific field.

This project, funded by an AHRC Collaborative Research Training award, has been designed to address this gap. With support from the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society program, this website was designed by the project co-ordinator, Professor Gordon Lynch, to provide an easily accessible resource to support individual researchers as well as courses in research methods in the study of religion. Training materials and position papers on the site were initially trailed for use through an intensive residential workshop held for PhD students from across the UK and Europe run in Oxford in September 2010. The discussion papers and exercises on the site are intended as introductory resources to give readers an overview of key issues and approaches.

Postgraduate users of the site, particularly at doctoral level, are encouraged to follow up with further reading using additional resources and links suggested for each topic. We hope to be able to add further relevant resources to the site over time, and welcome any feedback or suggestions for development of the site’s content.

Project Topics

– Conceptualizing religion
– Politics and ethics
– Rigor and validity
– Research design
– Comparative research
– Sampling
– Quantitative methods
– Ethnography
– Objects and space
– Visual methods
– Researching media

Website: https://www.kent.ac.uk/religionmethods/