Dr Richard Todd

• DPhil in Oriental Studies, University of Oxford
• MSt in Oriental Studies, University of Oxford
• BA (Hons) in Arabic with Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, Durham University

Since completing his doctorate at the University of Oxford, Richard Todd has taught Arabic, classical Arabic literature, and Islamic cultural and intellectual history at Durham University, the American University of Sharjah (as Visiting Assistant Professor), and the University of Edinburgh (for ten years), where he also taught Turkish. In 2017 he joined the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham, where he teaches Islamic philosophy and medieval thought, and has supervised over a dozen PhDs in Islamic studies. He is also currently external examiner for both the University of St Andrews and the University of Oxford's undergraduate Arabic and Islamic studies programmes. He is the author of The Sufi Doctrine of Man: Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi's Metaphysical Anthropology (Brill 2014) and is editor-in-chief of the Taylor & Francis quarterly journal Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations. His research focuses on points of intersection between premodern Islamic philosophy, theology, mysticism, science, and literature (in Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and Urdu), and often draws on Birmingham's Mingana collection of Islamic manuscripts. Recent research articles include 'Classical poetic motifs as alchemical metaphors in the Shudhur al-dhahab and its commentaries', Asiatische Studien 75.2 (2021), 'Physics and Metaphysics in an Early Ottoman Madrasa: Dawud al-Qaysari on the nature of time', Oriens 50.1-2 (2022), 'Alchemical Tafsir: Qur'anic Hermeneutics in the Works of the Twelfth-Century Moroccan Alchemist Ibn Arfa' Ra's', Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 34.3, (2023) and ‘The Perfect Human (al-insān al-kāmil)’ in the St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology (2024). Recent invited lectures include ‘Was Orhan Gazi a sponsor of philosophical Sufism? What manuscript sources can tell us about the early Ottoman patronage of Ibn 'Arabi's school’, Bogazici University, Istanbul (2023), and ‘The Vital Spirit in the Heart: the use of Galenic and Avicennian physiology in thirteenth-century Sufi texts’, Humboldt University, Berlin (2023).

Undergraduate

• Introduction to Islam
• Introduction to Qur’anic and Classical Arabic
• Sufism: Belief and Practice
• Dissertation Preparation
• Islamic Philosophy

Postgraduate

• Islamic Philosophy
• Approaches to Studying Islam
• Research Methods in Theology and Religion

Contributions to team-taught modules

• Introduction to the History of Christianity
• Religion and the Arts
• Dharmic Religions and Traditions
• Introduction to the Study of Religion
• Global Islam
• Life After Death
• The Human Condition

• Haya Alqasem, “Rereading the Qur’an: the reformist hermeneutics of Muhammad Shahrur and ‘Adnan al-Rifa’i”
• Muhammad Yasir Al-Hanafi, "Imam al-Sanusi on the Ash'ari doctrine of God's transcendence"
• Al Muatasim Al Maawali, "A juristic and codicological study of the narration of la qirad illa bi-'ayn"
• Doaa Baumi, “Muslim perceptions of biblical lore narratives (7th-14th centuries)”
• Rawdah Gawaher, "From duality of revelation to 'by scripture alone': a comparative study of the crisis of religious authority between Protestantism and modern Islam"
• Neelam Hussain, “Manuscripts and their readers: the Sirr al-asrar and the career of a pseudo-Aristotelian treatise”
• Shazad Khan, “Qasim Nanotvi’s Maturidi theology”
• Nadir Mohammad, “The theological poetry of Ahmed Raza Khan Barelvi”
• Azra Omerbegovic, “Bosnevi’s commentary on the Fusus al-hikam”
• Muhammet Saygi, “Nasafi on the concept of faith”
• Sainulabdeen Thameem, “The portrayal of Sri Lanka (Sarandib) in medieval Arabic travel and geographical texts (9th-15th centuries)"
• Abdud Younus, "The Tafsir tradition in the Indian subcontinent: a historical analysis of Qur'anic exegesis in Arabic, Urdu, Bengali, and English."

Find out more - our PhD Theology and Religion  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

• Sufism, especially the school of Ibn 'Arabi, and its historical interaction with Avicennian philosophy
• Arabic alchemy 
• Islamic philosophy, especially metaphysics and the philosophy of time
• Islamic theology
• Esoteric commentaries on the Qur'an
• Classical Arabic poetry
• Christian-Muslim Relations
• The Mingana collection of Arabic Islamic manuscripts

• Editor, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations
• Member of British Association of Islamic Studies