Welcome to Islamic Studies in Bayreuth

The Chair of Islamic Studies was set up in the Faculty of Literature and Linguistics in 1984 and is one of the Africa-related professorships at the University of Bayreuth. While teaching at the Bachelor level focuses on the principal methodology and a profound knowledge about Islam as a transformative aspect of histories, societies, cultural and religious practices in the Arab speaking world, the Master programs and most dissertation topics have a regional focus on Africa.

This corresponds to the research focus of Islamic Studies at the University of Bayreuth, which was involved in the application for larger Africa-related research cooperations from the very beginning. Islamic Studies in Bayreuth is also actively involved in the current Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, together with numerous further professorships from the broad array of humanities.

The current research at the Chair of Islamic Studies deals with Sufi and reformist Islamic movements, their literatures and historical transformations as well as transregional relations; discusses the various epistemological bases of Islamic educational practices and their different approaches to the classical Islamic text canon. The temporal focus is on the colonial period to the present; the regional focus on North, West and East Africa. The research data from past projects are mostly available for researchers in analogue versions in the Bayreuth Research Data Collection "Islam in Africa". The pilot project "Toward an Islamic Cultural Archive (ICA)", which is still ongoing, aims to collect, organize and make research data digitally accessable in the future.