Launching the OCIS-Abbasi Research Project

We are pleased to announce the launch of a collaborative research project between the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University and the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. Supported by ongoing research collaborations by Oxford, Stanford and faculty and researchers from an array of institutions, this project aims to forge new data resources for the study of the economic history and political economy of Muslim societies. The key research questions and inquiries that drive this collaborative research project include but are not limited to; rethinking the role of the Middle East and its relation to the history of capitalism, the relationship between ecology and regional political economies, transformations in imperial and post-imperial institutional frameworks for economic life, and the history of Islamic finance. To kick start this project, faculty and researchers from Stanford and Oxford convened for a mini conference on January 27th-28th 2022, where ongoing and future research areas related to the economic history of Muslim societies were explored.