Dr Ali-Reza Bhojani

• Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, 2024
• PhD in Islamic Legal Theory, Durham University, 2013
• MA in Research Methods (International Relations and Politics), Durham University, 2009
• Hawza Programme (4 year Arabic & Islamic Studies), Al-Mahdi Institute, 2008
• MCOptom, College of Optometrists, 2004
• BSc (hons) Optometry, Bradford University, 2003 

I was appointed Assistant Professor in Islamic Ethics in 2024, after having initially joined the Department of Theology and Religion as Teaching Fellow in Islamic Ethics and Theology in 2021. I have held previous academic posts at the Al-Mahdi Institute, the University of Nottingham, the University of Oxford, and the Markfield Institute for Education. At the al-Mahdi Institute I served as a member of the executive team from 2012-2017 and as co-director for the Centre for Intra-Muslim Studies 2019-2021.

It was at the Al-Mahdi Institute that I began my Islamic Studies training, before moving to Durham’s Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies for a master’s and PhD funded by a scholarship from the Economic and Social Research Council as part of the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World (CASAW). My PhD thesis was published as Moral Rationalism and Sharia (Routledge, 2015). The intimate, yet often contested, relationship between sharia and ethics continue to be a central theme within my research.  

Since 2021 I have served as Programme Lead for the MA in Islamic Studies, convening the core module Approaches to the Study of Islam and contributing to a range of other courses.

Each year, I convene and contribute to a range of undergraduate modules across our programmes in Theology & Religion. This has included:

• Islamic Ethics
• Law and Ethics as Theology in Christian and Muslim thought and Practice
• The Human Condition
• Introduction to Islam

I welcome proposals across Islamic Studies, especially in Islamic law and ethics, that engage the textual resources of the Islamic intellectual traditions.

Current doctoral supervision

The phenomena of Maddhab change amongst Sunni legal schools in the Mamluk period
Spiritual striving in British Muslim Shia communities
Previous doctoral supervision
The Origins of Imāmī Ḥadīth: A Bio-bibliographical Cross-reference Analysis
Taqi al-Din al-Subki on ijtihad and the role of the Qur’an in his legal thought.

My research brings interdisciplinary approaches to Islamic legal theory and its implications for contemporary Muslim thinking across philosophy, theology and ethics. A central concern within my research has been the relationship between Sharia and ethics, in theory, in practice, and in relation to applied issues. My work on applied ethical thinking has included considering issues around free speech, artificial intelligence, and human plurality. My research maintains a particular focus on Modern Twelver Shī ͑ī legal theory and its value as a discourse for exploring such questions, and I continue to benefit from collaborations with scholars that centre different methods (e.g. Anthropologists), and those who work out of different religious and philosophical traditions (both Muslim and non-Muslim).  

Projects

• Islamic Pluralities
• The Living Sharia Project (with Professor Morgan Clarke, University of Oxford)