Dr. Celene Ibrahim is a scholar of religious studies with a focus on Islamic intellectual history and applied ethics. She is best known for her monograph Women and Gender in the Qur'an , published by Oxford University Press, which won the Association of Middle East Women's Studies Book Award in 2021 and was featured for Women's History Month by the American Academy of Religion. She is also the author of the primer Islam and Monotheism (2022), published by Cambridge University Press. She is editor of the book One Nation, Indivisible: Seeking Liberty and Justice from the Pulpit to the Streets (Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2019). Her research interests include Islamic moral psychology and virtue ethics, women figures in early Islamic sources, postcolonial theology, and religiously informed feminist activism. Her current research project examines Islamic bioethics related to issues of gender and sexuality.

 

Ibrahim's articles on Islamic theology, Islamic family law, women's spiritual care, and pedagogies for interreligious studies have a global readership, and she regularly serves as a reviewer for prominent presses and academic journals. Ibrahim also specializes in chaplaincy, interreligious engagement, and religious leadership in the public sphere. 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.

 

Ibrahim offers courses and lectures at institutions around the world, leads international 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 in a number of international scholarly working groups. 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 (est. 1884), where she also serves as the School's Muslim Chaplain and member of the multifaith Spiritual Life Team. 

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In addition to studying traditional Islamic sciences, Ibrahim 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 where she also earned an MA in Women's and Gender Studies and Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. She received a degree in divinity from Harvard University as a Presidential Scholar with a focus on leadership in Muslim communities. She 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 and a current member of the movement's US Selection Committee. 

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Contact her here. 

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