The Institute of Islamic Area Studies at Sophia University was inaugurated on April 1, 2022. Formerly known as the Center for Islamic Studies, the Institute was established in 2006 as a division of the Institute of Asian Cultures, and became a research unit of the Temporary Research Division in 2010. Our goal is to pursue the study of Islam as a global issue by means of area studies based on detailed field research throughout the world. For more information, click here.
News
- Online lectures on demand "The Lives of Muslim Migrants in Diverse Local Contexts" will be held jointly with the Kenan Rifai Center for Sufi Studies at Kyoto University, which offer lecture videos on Monday November 11 until Sunday December 1 (in Japanese). This is one of the programs of Sophia Open Research Weeks 2024.
- The list of fellows has been updated.
- Research seminar on "A Demos In-Becoming: Tunisia 2014-2024, Struggles and Resistance to Remake the 'Missing People'" will be held in collaboration with Establishing Research Networks on the studies of protest movements: focusing on the cases of the Middle East and its comparison with those in Asia on Friday July 19, 2024.
- Online version of Sounds and Bodily Expressions in Sufism (SIAS Lectures 11) was published (in Japanese).
- Online version of Islamic Learning of al-Azhar from the End of 19th Century to the Beginning of 20th Century (Translation of ‘L’enseignement, la doctrine et la vie dans les universités musulmanes d’Égypte’ by Pierre Arminjon, SIAS Occasional Paper 44) was published (in Japanese).
- Hybrid research seminar on "Sufism and Saint Veneration" will be held in collaboration with the Kenan Rifai Center for Sufi Studies at Kyoto University on Sunday June 9, 2024 (in Japansese).
- Online version of Land Inheritance, Notability and City Governance in the Middle East: Cases from Raqqa and Amman (SIAS Lectures 10) was published.
- The list of fellows has been updated.
- Guest Lecture of Ms. Marianne Aringberg LAANATZA (advisor of MENA.SE), "Arab Women Entrepreneurs: Challenges and Development," will be given on Thursday, February 22, 2024.
- Guest Lecture of Prof. Michael LEEZENBERG (University of Amsterdam), "Kurdish Vernacular Literature in the Persianate Cosmopolitan: A Case Study in Early Modern Islamic Cultural History," will be given in collaboration with the University of Tokyo Centre for Middle Eastern Studies on Friday, February 16, 2024.
