Neil Robinson

Professor Robinson is a leading scholar in Islamic Studies - appointed to CAIS in 2011. He will serve as Deputy Director of CAIS from 1 July 2011. His previous academic appointments include: Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Leeds, Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Wales, and Professor of Islamic Studies at Sogang University, Seoul.

Professor Robinson was born and educated in the UK where he gained an Oxford MA and a Birmingham PhD. While a research fellow in Bradford, he won a scholarship to spend a sabbatical year at the Sorbonne working on classical Quranic commentaries. More recently he was awarded a twelve-month professorial fellowship at the University of Leuven, in Belgium, to research contemporary Muslim ideologues and intellectuals. He has been a visiting lecturer at the University of Essex and the Hastie lecturer at the University of Glasgow. He is a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of the UK and Ireland.

Professor Robinson’s publications include: Islam: A Concise Introduction (Georgetown University Press, 1999); Discovering the Qur’an: a Contemporary Approach to a Veiled Text (Georgetown University Press, 2004); and Christ in Islam and Christianity: The representation of Jesus in the Qur’an and the Classical Muslim Commentaries (State University of New York Press, 1991) — as well as a substantial number of articles. His current research focuses on contemporary political Islam. In addition to Arabic he reads Greek, Hebrew and Syriac.