Celene Ibrahim is a multidisciplinary scholar of religious studies with a focus on Islamic intellectual history, gender studies, and applied ethics. She is best known for her monograph Women and Gender in the Qur'an, published by Oxford University Press. The work won the Association of Middle East Women's Studies Book Award, and the American Academy of Religion featured the title for Women's History Month. Ibrahim is also the author of Islam and Monotheism (2022), an accessible primer on Islamic theology published by Cambridge University Press. She is the editor of the anthology One Nation, Indivisible: Seeking Liberty and Justice from the Pulpit to the Streets (Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2019), selections from which are featured in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin. 

 

Ibrahim regularly publishes on both scholarly and popular platforms. Her articles on Islamic theology, women's spiritual care, and pedagogies for interreligious studies have garnered an international readership. she serves as a reviewer for prominent academic presses and journals. Her specialities include Islamic moral psychology and virtue ethics, postcolonial theology, and spiritually informed activism. Her current book project examines contemporary Islamic ethics related to issues of sex and gender. 

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Ibrahim also specializes in spiritual care, chaplaincy in educational settings, interreligious and civic engagement, religious leadership in the public sphere, adolescent education, and conflict transformation. She previously served as a Denominational Counselor with the Office of Ministry Studies at Harvard Divinity School and as the Muslim Chaplain at Tufts University. She currently resides at the Groton School as a faculty member in the Department of Religious Studies and Philosophy. She also serves as the School's Muslim Chaplain. Ibrahim has held multiple teaching fellowships, including through the New York Times Learning Network and Teachers College at Columbia University.

 

Ibrahim offers courses and lectures at educational and civic institutions around the world and has served as a trusted voice on religion in contemporary affairs for a variety of media outlets, including NPR, PBS, and Netflix. She also serves on multiple non-profit boards and international scholarly working groups and is a consultant on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

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Ibrahim earned her bachelor's degree with highest honors at Princeton University, where she was a Davis Scholar and major in Near Eastern Studies. She received a degree in divinity from Harvard University as a Presidential Scholar with a focus on religious and civic leadership in Muslim communities. She was a Mellon Fellow and earned a doctorate in Arabic and Islamic Civilizations in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University and also earned a dual MA in Women's and Gender Studies and Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. Ibrahim is a graduate of the United World College movement and serves on the movement's US National Committee. She is a life-long student of traditional Islamic sciences. Contact her here. 

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