Appointments and achievements across the board by DSR members.
Suleyman Dost was awarded a Connaught New Researcher grant for his project ““Materializing” Islamic Origins: Using Archaeology and Epigraphy for a Religious History of Arabia before Islam.”
Postdoctoral fellow Isaiah Ellis was named as one of the University of Alabama’s Religious Studies Department’s 2024 American Examples (AE) cohort. AE is a wonderful opportunity for early-career scholars to bring together questions of method and theory in the study of religion while developing their public humanities skills. Many DSR alums are also AE alums!
John Kloppenborg presided at the 72nd Colloquium Biblicum Lovaniense, KU Leuven, July 18-20 2023. His presidential address was “Early Christianity in Civic Space.” The colloquium featured 38 invited papers in English, German, French, and Flemish, all treating civic aspects of the early Jesus movement. Presenters included scholars from Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Romania, the UK, Canada, the US, Spain, Australia, and Austria. Two DSR graduate students also participated: Christina Gousopoulos and Jon-Philippe Ruhumuliza.
PhD candidate Janani Mandayam Comar was selected as a Critical Digital Humanities Initiative Graduate Fellow, with her project “Caste, Literature, and Reading Publics: A Print History of Nandanar’s Story in Colonial and Postcolonial Tamil Nadu.” supervised by Srilata Raman. Read all about it in this feature Q&A.
PhD alumnus Amin Mansouri (2022, supervisor Shafique Virani) was shortlisted for the British Association for Islamic Studies Prize in the Study of Islam and the Muslim World, for his dissertation, “Azīz-i Nasafī (fl. 7th/13th c.), Hierarchies, and Islamic Cosmopolitanism.”
Undergraduate Specialist in Religion, Audrey Miatello, won first prize Canadian Society for the Study of Religion) Undergraduate Student Essay contest, with “Reconnecting to Nature in the 21st Century: Considering Laudato Si’ as a Guide.” Audrey wrote this paper as part of an independent directed reading course with Alex Hampton last semester, but also incorporated some material from the other five courses that she has taken with him over the years in exploring the relationship between religion and the environment. → Read the Arts & Science News piece on Audrey's achievement
In an international collaboration, Walid Saleh co-organized and presented at “Bridging the Gap: Texts, Commentaries and the New Audience” held on July 27 at the Humboldt University of Berlin.
Congratulations to DSR alumnus Khenpo Kunga Sherab (PhD, 2023), who was elected to the American Academy of Religion's Tibetan and Himalayan Religions Unit steering committee.