KHK Visting Research Fellow 2018/19
Full Professor of Gender Studies and Islamic Studies at the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies (AOI) at the University of Zurich

Since March 2009, Bettina Dennerlein is full professor of Gender Studies and Islamic Studies at the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies (AOI) at the University of Zurich. She received her Ph.D. at Freie Universität Berlin. In 2000 she joined the Centre of Modern Oriental Studies (Berlin) and later Humboldt University in Berlin as a senior researcher. From 2007 to 2009 she was Professor for the History of the Modern Arab World at the University of Hamburg. She has been granted different fellowships at Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (Paris).

Bettina Dennerlein’s research covers topics of modern and contemporary social and cultural history of the Arab speaking region, as for example the fields of Islamic family law, women’s rights and human rights movement, the nexus of gender, law and religion and more further religious cultures and traditions of scholarship. Other fields of academic expertise are politics of memory, Orientalism, postcolonial theory and modern reform movement. Her work is published among others in the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, Continuity and Change, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Egypte - Monde Arabe, and Das Argument.

Education

• PhD, Islamic Studies, Free University of Berlin, 1997

KHK Fellowship

Duration: September 2018 - January 2019
Project: Gender, Islamic Normativity and Cultural Critique in the Arab Region