Our specialisms

Taking a global and often interdisciplinary perspective we examine the role of religion in society, politics and culture.

Our range of specialisms are varied and include:

• Religion, conflict and peacebuilding, with an interest in religious factors and conflict in Africa; the relationship between religion and peace before, during, and after violent conflict within and between states in Africa.
• Religion and politics, focusing on how religion shapes or is influenced by political thought, practice and institutions in pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial Africa, South Asia and the Muslim world.
• Inter-religious relations, “interfaith dialogue”, specifically Muslim-Jewish relations and Muslim-Christian relations both UK and globally. Christian-Muslim relations in Africa; Black and Minority Ethnic Communities in the West, such as Nigerian Christians and Muslims in Britain.
• Methods and fieldwork in the study of religion, society and culture, specifically anthropological and sociological approaches.
• African religions, especially African Christianity and African Indigenous Religions.
• Societies and cultures of the Muslim world, UK and Western Europe, MENA/ SWANA region, South Asia, Balkans/ Eastern Europe, West Africa, South East Asia.
• Models of religious pedagogy, esp. Islamic education.
• Qur’anic and tafsir studies, with a focus on the Qur’an’s text and reception: its language, structure, literary form, and the interpretive traditions through which it has generated meaning across time.
• Arabic linguistics, especially balagha, metaphor theory, nazm, repetition, and classical and post-classical debates on language, meaning, and textual structure.
• Early South Asian history and culture, especially poetry, mythology and drama using primary sources in Sanskrit and Bengali, epigraphy and manuscript study; comparative literary methods, aesthetics.
• Indian Philosophy and Hinduism, Hindu and Buddhist texts and topics in Sanskrit, Pali (and depending on topic, Tamil) in the broad areas of metaphysics, epistemology, phenomenology and theology, classical and contemporary studies in ritual, devotional practices, daily religious life, society and identity, and religion and politics.
• Comparative philosophy and religion, topics that make meaningful comparisons between classical Indian and other traditions in topics such as emotions, consciousness, non/selfhood, contemplative practice and God.
• Women, gender, and religions, with particular attention to female religious authority, in Islam, women’s roles in the revelatory event in Muslim traditions, their contributions to the reception and interpretation of the Qur’an and foundational texts. This also includes contemporary approaches to gender in Islam, and Muslim engagements with feminism and gender theory. Women's agency in classical Indian religious traditions especially counter-normative traditions in early South Asia, Śākta history, scriptures and literature, comparative and non-western feminism.