Dr. Asma Afsaruddin

Asma Afsaruddin is Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures in the School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID). She is the author and editor of seven books, including Contemporary Issues in Islam (Edinburgh University Press, 2015); Striving in the Path of God: Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought (Oxford University Press, 2013) which won a World Book Award from the Iranian government in 2015 and was a runner-up for the 2014 British-Kuwaiti Friendship Society Book Prize; and The First Muslims: History and Memory (OneWorld Publications 2008), which was recently translated into Turkish. Her research has been funded by grants from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, among others.

Professor Afsaruddin is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Religion and was previously the Kraemer Middle East Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the College of William and Mary. She has been a fellow with the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) in Cairo and the American Research Institute of Turkey (ARIT) in Istanbul. Afsaruddin has served on a number of editorial boards, including, most recently, of the Oxford Encyclopedia on Islam and Women (2013) and the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World (2008).