Keynote speakers

Prof. Judith Tucker
Judith Tucker has a PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. She is a Professor of History, Director of the Master of Arts in Arab Studies Program at Georgetown University. Her research interests focus on the Arab world in the Ottoman period, women in Middle East history, and Islamic law, women, and gender. She is the author of many publications on the history of women and gender in the Arab world, including Women, Family, and Gender in Islamic Law (2008) and In the House of the Law: Gender and Islamic Law in Ottoman Syria and Palestine (1998). She is the editor of Arab Women: Old Boundaries, New Frontiers and co-editor of A Social History of Women and Gender in the Modern Middle East. In addition, she has authored numerous articles for professional journals and edited volumes. Currently, she serves as Editor for the International Journal of Middle East Studies.

Prof. Jørgen Nielsen

Jørgen S. Nielsen is Professor of Islamic Studies, from October 2007, appointed to a five-year research chair funded by the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF) with the theme ‘Islamic European Thought and Modernity’ at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, where he leads the Centre for European Islamic Thought. He holds degrees in Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, and a PhD in Arab history from the American University of Beirut. Lecturer at the Centre for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Department of Theology, University of Birmingham from 1978 and director of the Centre 1988-2001. Appointed Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Birmingham in 1996. Director of the Danish Institute in Damascus and Cultural Counsellor at the Danish Embassy 2005-2007. Research has been concentrated on the situation of Muslims in Europe with related interests in the Islamic debate on religious pluralism and relations with the West. He regularly lectures and participates in conferences in various parts of the world, and has worked as a consultant to the EU Presidency and the Council of Europe on religious minorities, and to the Danish, Swedish and British foreign ministries on Islam and Europe. Major recent publications include: Muslims in Western Europe (Edinburgh University Press, 1992; 2^nd ed. 1995; German translation, Hamburg: EBV-Rissen, 1995; 3^rd ed. 2004; Arabic translation, Beirut: Saqi Press, 2006). Arabs and the West: Mutual Images, ed. jointly with Sami Khasawneh (Amman: University of Jordan, 1998). Towards a European Islam (London: Macmillan, 1999). Ethnology of Sufi orders: theory and practice, ed. jointly with A. Zhelyazkova, (Sofia: IMIR, 2001). Muslim networks and transnational communities in and across Europe, ed. jointly with S. Allievi (Leiden: Brill, 2003). Shari’a as Discourse: Legal Traditions and the Encounter with Europe, ed. with Lisbet Christoffersen (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010). General editor of the series Muslim Minorities, Leiden: Brill. Chief editor, Yearbook of Muslims in Europe, Leiden: Brill, from 2009.

Prof. Sabry Hafez
Sabry Hafez is professor in comparative literature at University of Qatar. Until, recently, he was research professor of modern Arabic and comparative literature at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London He has published The Genesis of Arabic Narrative Discourse (2001) and is the co-editor of A Reader of Modern Arabic Short Stories (2001) together with Catherine Cobham. Professor Hafez is also the editor of the journal Al-Kalimah.

Prof. Zachary Lockman
Zachary Lockman is professor and Chair of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at Department of History, New York University. His area of research interest is on modern Middle Eastern history. Lockman is the author of Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism (2004) and Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948 (1996), among others. Lockman is currently a member of the American Historical Association, and has previously been a Guggenheim fellow and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars fellow.