Museum and Archive

British Museum

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1958

Pitt Rivers Museum

Author:

EMHAI

Next to the Pitt Rivers Museum is the sire of current Oxford Islamic Society meeting space. There is a rich repository of materials related to Islamic Society at the Weston Library, held within the John Johnson collection. The collection includes term cards, advice booklets and event posters dating back to 1958.

The specificity of Oxford as a transient space meant analysing ‘Muslimness’ in an urban context that is distinctly different from other places in the UK. Whilst the notion of ‘town’ and ‘gown’ is often synonymous with the University of Oxford and its relationship with locals, our research revealed a more complex relationship, in which Muslims within the university often negotiated their own exclusions within the institution, which influenced the creation of student organisations that, at times, made connections with Muslims within the city. This includes a Muslim Welfare House on Stanley Road, East Oxford, where students were encouraged to visit in help guides produced by ISOC in the 1980s.

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Sources and Attribution

JMOX SOC 18, Islamic Society, John Johnson Collection, Bodliean Library,University of Oxford, Oxford. 

Aleena Din - Aleena is a historian of gender, class and race in modern Britain. Her DPhil research, which was completed at Balliol College and the Faculty of History in 2022, focuses on the migration, settlement and labour experiences of working-class British-Pakistani women who settled in Middlesbrough and Oldham between 1962 and 2002. Aleena is the co-investigator of the community history project 'A Muslim History of Oxford', in collaboration with the national heritage organisation 'Everyday Muslim'. In addition, she is a postdoctoral research associate for the digital humanities project, 'Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks, 1830 to the Present' at the University of Bristol (2025).

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