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Research Area

Islamic Studies

The Institute

Al-Maktoum Institute is an independent research-led institution located in the city of Dundee, offering postgraduate degree programmes validated by the University of Aberdeen. It is a new and exciting development in teaching and research in the study of Islam and Muslims. The aim of the Institute is to be a centre of excellence in the Study of Islam and Muslims, in particular to promote intelligent debate and understanding on Islam and the role of Muslims in the contemporary world, and to be a place of knowledge and reflection on the issues facing a diverse and multicultural world in the 21st century. In pursuit of this aim, the Institute is actively working to educate the next generation of scholars, both nationally and internationally, in the study of Islam and Muslims to enable them to face the challenges and opportunities of a diverse and multicultral world.

The academic niche of the Institute comes from the fact that it is one of the key post-orientalist, post-traditionalist, and multicultural institutions in the world. It recognises the need to develop the study of Islam and Muslims as a discipline with long-established roots, but must face the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. The Institute is distinct from traditional approaches, where the focus has been to study Islam and Muslims from just one limited perspective. Research and teaching at the Institute looks at Islam and Muslims in many different ways, and in many global contexts. This reflects a diversity of teaching and research interests spanning a variety of subject areas and methodological approaches in the study of Islam and Muslims. Indeed, the Institute does not seek to offer Islamic Studies within a single methodology. We offer interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary training in the study of Islam and Muslims within a number of different methodologies, e.g. history, political science, sociology, anthropology, geography, as well as traditional areas in Islamic Studies.

Accordingly, the Institute has developed unique teaching programmes based on current and progressive research and which take into consideration the needs and preferences of our local, national and international students. It provides our students with an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach so that they can appreciate and understand the various schools of thought within a specific line of study.

One of the Institute's aims is to provide a meeting point between the Western and Muslim worlds of learning, and to encourage and forge international links, scholarship and academic co-operation. In our effort to achieve this, the Al-Maktoum Institute aspires not only to provide postgraduate teaching and research of the highest quality, but also to act as a national resource in the Scottish and UK contexts for consultation by government bodies, public organisations, industry, business and the media.

A very important element of the Institute's teaching reflected in our curricula, our research, and our ethos is a commitment to pursuing a better understanding of multiculturalism and the issues that cultural and religious diversity provide in the 21st century globalised context. Thus the Al-Maktoum Institute has established a Centre for Research on Multiculturalism and Islam and Muslims in Scotland as well as a think-tank called the Multiculturalism Research Unit under the directorship of Professor Malory Nye. The Al-Maktoum Institute is also pioneering the new field of inquiry in Islamic Jerusalem Studies, and has established the Centre for Islamic Jerusalem Studies, under the direction of Prof Abd al-Fattah El-Awaisi.

The Al-Maktoum Institute offers two postgraduate taught Masters (MLitt) programmes: in Islamic Studies, and in Islamic Jerusalem Studies, both of which can be taken as a one-year full-time or two-year part-time degree. The Institute also provides expert supervision for postgraduate research in all the main areas of the Study of Islam and Muslims, for the degrees of MPhil and PhD.

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