8th Night of Muharram

Ali-Reza Bhojani is senior lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Markfield Institute of Higher Education and lecturer at the Al-Mahdi Institute. He holds a PhD in Islamic legal theory from the University of Durham (2013) and has held academic posts at the University of Oxford and the University of Nottingham. His research, teaching and writing focuses on contemporary implications of Islamic legal theory, theology and ethics.

Before coming to Oxford, Ali-Reza developed and taught courses on ‘Islamic Ethics’ and ‘Islamic Theology and Philosophy’ at the University of Nottingham where he continues to be an Honorary Research Fellow in Theology and Religious Studies. This followed over five years as a leading part of the research and teaching team at Al-Mahdi Institute, Birmingham. His doctoral work (Durham, 2013) focussed on the role of non-scriptural judgements of morality as a source of Sharia within Shi’i thought and was published as Moral Rationalism and Shari’a: A Study of Independent Rationality in Modern Shi’i Usul al-fiqh (Routledge, 2015). Amongst his current projects is a co-edited volume being prepared for Brill and titled Visions of Shari’a: Contemporary Discussions in Shi’i Legal Theory.

Ali-Reza is an elected council member of the British Association of Islamic Studies, and a member of Durham University’s Islam, Law and Modernity Research Cluster. Ali-Reza contributes regularly to a variety of outreach and knowledge exchange activities and is a practicing optometrist.