Islamic Studies in European Higher Education: Navigating Academic and Confessional Approaches

Jørgen S. Nielsen is Emeritus Professor of Contemporary European Islam, University of Birmingham, and Affiliate Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Copenhagen. He studied Arabic and Middle East studies at SOAS, London, and did his PhD in Arab history at the American University of Beirut. Since 1978 he has researched Islam in Europe at Selly Oak Colleges and the University of Birmingham. He was director of the Danish Institute in Damascus 2005-7 and then spent six years as Danish National Research Foundation professor at the Faculty of Theology, Copenhagen University. He is the author of Muslims in Western Europe (Edinburgh, 1st ed. 1993, 4th edition with Jonas Otterbeck 2016) and is involved in editing several book series for Brill (Leiden) as well as the Journal of Muslims in Europe.

Stephen H. Jones is Lecturer in the Department of Theology and Religion, University of Birmingham. He is a sociologist of religion whose main areas of expertise are in Islam and Muslims in the UK and religious and non-religious publics’ perceptions of science. He is author of Islam and the Liberal State (IB Tauris, 2021) and presently Principal Investigator of a research project, ‘Science and the Transmission of Islamic Knowledge in Britain’, which examines views of Islam and science among students and teachers in UK Islamic educational institutions.