Opportunities

The Assistant Director supports and reports to the Director. Responsibilities include the management and facilitation of Contemporary/ Ottoman Türkiye-related aspects of the BIAA’s research programme and public events and outreach, managing the library staff and the daily running of the library. The Assistant Director also collaborates with the BIAA IT Manager to further develop BIAA’s IT digital framework.

The post of Assistant Director is key to the daily organisation and smooth running of the Institute’s research activities with potential to shape the future research agenda whilst undertaking their own research for which they are eligible to apply to the BIAA for research grants.

Applications are invited for a PhD project in Middle Eastern history at Northumbria University. Supervised by Dr Peter Hill, the project will enhance understanding of Arabic-language cultures by offering a new perspective on topics of which there are extant studies, or by examining one of the many areas that are hitherto unexplored.

While Dr Hill is an expert on nineteenth-century Ottoman Syria and Egypt, and this studentship is associated with his AHRC RDE Fellowship project ‘Reason and Religion in Ottoman Syria’, the focus of the proposed PhD need not fall within these areas. Any historical period from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries will be considered; preference may, though, be given to subject areas involving use of Arabic-language sources.

Summer School, AKU-ISMC, Lisbon, 27-30 June 2023

This four-day face-to-face summer school aims to reconsider how Islam, Muslims and their contexts are studied today. It will give participants in-depth knowledge about recent developments in the study of Islam, Muslims and their societies. Apart from lectures, the summer course will include film screenings with discussions, panel discussions and study visits.

The course will be taught collaboratively by the faculty of the NOVA Faculty of Social and Human Sciences (FCSH) in Lisbon and the Aga Khan University's Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (AKU-ISMC) in London. The course will be led by Professor Maria Cardeira Silva from NOVA-FCSH and the Dean, AKU-ISMC, Professor Leif Stenberg.

We are pleased to announce to dear researchers and academics that we are seeking submissions for a special issue of the Journal of the Contemporary Study of Islam on the topic of Islam and the Discourse of the European Enlightenment. We welcome articles on the themes of the Islamic conception of Subjectivity and Maturity: the two most important categories of the Enlightenment; Islam and Reason; Islam and Political Sovereignty; Islam and Secularism; Islam and Development and any other related themes. We also welcome book reviews on the above topics.

Article length should be 5000 to 7000 words and should be submitted through the journal website.

This issue of Critical Times probes the question of solidarity—its subjects, horizons, difficulties, and limits. In some social-theoretical accounts, solidarity is a force that coheres subjects, holds them together in one community, and coordinates their aspirations, sympathies, or interests in perfect unity. Solidarity, in other words, transcends differences to generate unity; indeed, it converts difference into sameness. And when such differences persist or reappear in new forms, solidarity is said to be in danger or to have failed. Yet this is neither the only archive nor the only horizon of solidarity. Other historical and contemporary practices of solidarity offer distinct grammars and horizons: from anticolonial solidarity to contemporary migrant solidarity, solidarity emerges as less a given social force and more an incomplete, imperfect challenge of attaching and connecting subjects, predicaments, and struggles in ways that move beyond inclusion and point to radical transformation.

Graduate Student Research Workshop, NYU Abu Dhabi, 4-6 March 2024

The NYU Abu Dhabi Humanities Research Fellowship for the Study of the Arab World program invites applications for the upcoming Graduate Student Research Workshop to be hosted in spring 2024 at NYU Abu Dhabi.

The Humanities Research Fellowship for the Study of the Arab World program welcomes applications from international doctoral students with the opportunity to present and thoroughly discuss their Ph.D. projects related to the Arab world.

Participants will read and discuss each other’s work in addition to presenting their own. NYUAD-based scholars in a variety of disciplines will offer feedback on the students’ projects and questions related to research, writing, and professional development. The workshop is also an opportunity to meet, learn from, and develop relationships with colleagues in the field.

I.B.Tauris and the British Institute at Ankara are seeking book proposals for the Contemporary Turkey academic book series. The Contemporary Turkey monograph series is a joint initiative by the British Institute at Ankara (BIAA), internationally renowned for its support of independent academic research, and leading publisher of Middle East and Turkish Studies I.B. Tauris, an imprint of Bloomsbury Academic.

The series publishes cutting-edge research monographs and edited collections from a new generation of scholars working on modern Turkey across the social sciences and humanities. In bringing to light new data and insights directly from the field, this series is distinguished by its emphasis on innovative approaches that challenge established ways of examining Turkey.