Farah El-Sharif

Dr. Farah El-Sharif is a scholar of Islamic intellectual history. She received her PhD from Harvard University in 2022, where her dissertation was on the most widely disseminated Islamic text in 19th century West Africa by Umar Futi Tal. Her academic interests lie in Islam in West and North Africa, the nation state and the intersection of Islamic law and Sufism. Dr. El-Sharif served as Stanford's Abbasi Program's Associate Director from 2021-2023.

She received her Master’s degrees in Islamic Studies from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley where she worked on representations of Sufism in American religion and the public sphere. She earned another Master's in Islamic Studies from Harvard University’s Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. She completed her undergraduate degree at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service with a focus on Islam and colonialism and has done research in Jordan, Egypt, Morocco and Senegal.

Dr. El-Sharif is working on her first book and taught a class at Stanford in the Fall Quarter that is cross-listed between Stanford Global Studies, the Religious Studies Department, and African and African American Studies, entitled: "Beyond Decolonization: Islam in West Africa."