Dr. Celene Ibrahim

Dr. Celene Ibrahim is scholar of religious studies with a focus on Islamic social and intellectual history and applied ethics. She is the author of the monograph Women and Gender in the Qur'an published by Oxford University Press (2020). The book won the Association of Middle East Women's Studies Book Award (2021) and was a featured title for Women's History Month by the American Academy of Religion (2022). She is the author of Islam and Monotheism (2022), published in the Elements series by Cambridge University Press.
Ibrahim also specializes in chaplaincy, spiritual care, interreligious engagement, and religious leadership in the public sphere. She is the editor of the book One Nation, Indivisible: Seeking Liberty and Justice from the Pulpit to the Streets (Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2019). She previously served as the Muslim Counselor affiliated with the Office of Ministry Studies at Harvard Divinity School and as the Muslim Chaplain at Tufts University.
Ibrahim's articles on Islamic theology, Islamic family law, women's spiritual care, and pedagogies for interreligious studies have appeared in dozens of academic publications and she regularly serves as a reviewer for university presses and leading academic journals. Her research interests include moral psychology and virtue ethics, Qur'anic depictions of masculinity, women figures in early Islamic biographical sources, and comparative theology.
Ibrahim regularly offers courses and lectures at institutions around the world, leads global study trips, and is a trusted voice on Islamic history and religion in contemporary public life. She serves on a number of non-profit boards and participates regularly in scholarly working groups, including the International Association for Qur'anic Studies and the Society for Biblical Literature. Ibrahim is also a passionate educator with a decade of experience teaching religious studies. She currently serves as a faculty member in the Department of Religious Studies and Philosophy at Groton School.
Ibrahim has studied traditional Islamic sciences with scholars around the world, 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, received a degree in divinity from Harvard University as a Presidential Scholar, and was a Davis Scholar at Princeton University where she received a bachelor's degree with highest honors in Near Eastern Studies. She is a proud graduate of the United World College movement.


