Academic Institutions related to research on Islam/ Muslims

This collection compiles all of the Academic Institutions, Centres, and Foundations that conduct, facilitate or fund research on Islam or Muslims, in the United Kingdom and the wider world. Each record includes information on open access resources and events, study programmes, research outputs and literature on Muslims in Britain. Where relevant, we have also linked information for scholarships, funding and prizes.

Somerville College

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EMHAI

Somerville College houses archival materials related to the Oxford Majlis, which was a student society modeled after the Cambridge Majlis and the Oxford Union. It was a broadly left-wing and anti-imperialist forum for students who came from South Asia, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The society hosted debates and social events, with notable speakers including Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. Members include Liaquat Ali Khan, who became the first Prime Minister of Pakistan and was heavily involved with the Indian independence movement.

Kamal Hossain, who drafted the first constitution for Bangladesh, reflected on the history of the Majlis in a magazine published in 1986. In it, he highlighted the difficulty with which leaders of independence movements (including him) negotiated their experiences as students at Oxford with the university’s position as an imperial centre. Kamal suggested that these leaders would often discuss their time in Oxford with ambivalence. This poses interesting questions about the extent to which networking and connection-making affected the politicisation of these individuals.

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Sources and Attribution

See: Anuj Mishra, 'Can you revive something that’s long dead?: the Oxford Majlis', Cherwell (1st December 2023). Also see: 'The Majlis in the Mid-Fifties', by Kamal Hossain.

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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Academic Institutions related to research on Islam/ Muslims

Centre for the Study of Islam in the Contemporary World (Al Waleed Centre), University of Edinburgh

Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK (Islam UK Centre), Cardiff University

Centre of Islamic Studies, SOAS University

The Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre of Islamic Studies, University of Cambridge

Woolf Institute, University of Cambridge

The Aziz Foundation

Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, University of Oxford

Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Durham University

Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies