PhD Supervision

The Centre offers research supervision across a wide range of areas such as modern Islamic thought, philosophy, politics, literature and law.

The Centre's three universities are well known for their substantial undergraduate and postgraduate programs as well as research excellence in Arabic and Islamic Studies. The Centre engages widely published teaching and research staff who are internationally renowned for their research expertise in their respective fields. Many are regularly awarded research grants by national and international agencies and hold joint appointments in a range of academic departments including medicine, political science, history and law.

Prospective candidates interested in pursuing postgraduate research in the Centre are advised to contact a potential supervisor and discuss their research proposals before submitting an application. The Centres research focus and interests can be found below.

Scholarship Information

Listed below are links to various scholarship programs for prospective candidates interested in pursuing postgraduate research in Australia.

The Australian Postgraduate Awards
http://www.dest.gov.au/ ... /australian_postgraduate_awards_scheme.htm

AusAID Scholarship Programs
http://www.ausaid.gov.au/scholar/

Endeavour Awards
http://www.endeavour.deewr.gov.au/

JASON: Postgraduate Scholarship Database for Australia
http://www.jason.edu.au/index.pl

Research Focus and Interests

University of Melbourne

Prof Abdullah Saeed

• Negotiation of text and context, ijtihad and interpretation in Islamic thought
• Qur'anic hermeneutics
• Islamic law reform
• Islamic law and freedom of religion
• Islam and human rights
• Islamic thought in Indonesia
• Muslim communities in Australia
• Christian-Muslim relations

A/Prof Shahram Akbarzadeh

• Middle Eastern politics
• Central Asian politics
• Political Islam
• Political Islam and the Middle East
• US relations with the Muslim world
• Muslim diaspora

Dr. Abdul-Samad Abdullah

• Arabic poetry of West Africa/ West African Arabic literature
• Arabic poetry in Qur’anic narratives
• Modern and classical Arabic literature
• Arabic rhetoric and stylistics
• Modern Islamic thought
• Qur’anic exegesis
• Islam in West Africa

Dr. Muhammad Kamal

• Modern Islamic thought
• Philosophies of Hegel
• Western Existentialism
• Philosophies of Heidegger
• Mulla Sadra’s existential philosophy

A/Prof. Richard Pennell

• Modern political history
• History of North Africa, particularly Morocco and Libya
• History of criminal trials abroad and national identity
• History of armed jihad

Griffith University

Dr. Mohamad Abdalla

• History of Islamic science
• Islam in Australia
• Islamic ethics
• History of Islamic civilization
• Contextualization of Islamic thought

Dr. Halim Rane

• Reformation of the Islamic doctrine of war and peace
• Israel-Palestine conflict
• Philosophy of Islamic law
• Media representation of Muslims
• Islam in the West

University of Western Sydney

A/Prof Adam Possamai

• Religion
• Sociology of religion
• Deviance
• Social theory
• Popular culture
• Consumer culture

Dr. Steven Drakeley

• Role of social and political forces based on Islam in the political history of Indonesia since independence
• Islam in Southeast Asia
• Indonesian history and historiography
• Malaysian history

A/Prof Gabriele Marranci

• Identity
• Muslim migration/immigration
• Urban sociology
• Fundamentalism
• Political Islam
• Secularisation processes
• Criminology, and anthropology of music
• Relationship between anthropological research and cognitive neuroscience