Welcoming Visiting Scholar Professor Munir Jiwa to the Abbasi Program

Munir Jiwa is the Founding Director of the Center for Islamic Studies and Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and Anthropology at the Graduate Theological Union, and serves as a faculty at the Othering and Belonging Institute’s Religious Diversity Cluster at UC Berkeley. He holds a PhD and MPhil in Anthropology from Columbia University, an MTS from Harvard Divinity School, a BA from SFU, and held postdoctoral positions at MIT and at the University of Toronto. His research interests include Islam and Muslims in the West, Islamophobia studies, media, art and aesthetics, secularism, religious formation and leadership, religion in the public sphere, and interreligious and theological education.  He is the recipient of foundation awards and grants from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Ford Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and the Walter and Elise Haas Fund. From 2019-2021 he served as the Chair of the Committee on Racial and Ethnic Minorities at the American Academy of Religion. He received the GTU Excellence in Teaching Award in 2015 and was the GTU Distinguished Faculty in 2019.

While at Stanford, Dr. Jiwa will be a visiting scholar in Global Studies at the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, working on a manuscript on Islamophobia and the politics of belonging. He is looking forward to working with colleagues across disciplines, and especially grateful to learn from and with Dr. Rania Awaad at the Stanford School of Medicine.