About the Scholarship:
Al-Mahdi Institute (AMI) welcomes applications for the third round of the AMI Doctoral Scholarship to support talented students working on the study of Imāmī (Twelver) Shīʿism. Despite being one of the largest minority denominations, Imāmī Shīʿism is still a relatively small area of focus within Islamic studies. It is the aim of the AMI Doctoral Scholarship to promote and encourage the study of Imāmī Shīʿism in academia.
The scholarship is open to students of all nationalities who have been successfully admitted to a doctoral programme at universities based in Europe, the United Kingdom, North America, and Australasia and are writing their thesis in the English language. For students admitted to doctoral programmes in the United Kingdom, the scholarship is available at any point from the first year of the programme. For students based at universities in Europe, North America and Australasia, the scholarship is available at any point after comprehensive exams have been successfully completed.
The value of the scholarship is up to £3,000.
We welcome applications from students working in the following fields of research:
- Imāmī Shīʿī theology
- Imāmī Shīʿī law and legal theory
- Imāmī Shīʿī exegeses of the Qur’an
- Imāmī Shīʿī Hadith studies
- Imāmī Shīʿī engagements with Qur’anic studies
- Imāmī Shīʿī engagements with ethics
- Imāmī Shīʿī engagements with philosophy
- Imāmī Shīʿī engagements with mysticism (Sufism)
- Studies concerning the life and thought of the Prophet, the twelve Imāms, and other members of the ahl al-bayt; particularly that of women (such as Khadīja, Fāṭima, and Zaynab, amongst others)
- Studies related to the life and thought of the Companions of the Prophet and Imāms who advocated the centrality of the ahl al-bayt in their theological and political positions (such as Salmān, Abū Dharr al-Ghifārī, Hishām b. al-Ḥakam, Zurāra b. Aʿyan et al)
- The intellectual history of Imāmī Shīʿī thought
- Imāmī Shīʿī thought across different time periods and regions (Baghdad, Ḥilla, Qum, Jabal ʿĀmil, Iṣfahan, Najaf, Karbala, Lucknow, etc)
- Diversity in Imāmī Shīʿī thought
- Imāmī Shīʿī liturgical sources and thought
- Contribution of Imāmī Shīʿī thought to Islamic civilisation
However, topics which fall outside the scope of these specified topics may still be considered at the discretion of the committee, providing they are still related to the study of Imāmī Shīʿism.
To apply for the Scholarship, please complete the application form at the bottom of this page and submit the following documents:
- A tailored CV of 1-2 pages detailing your qualifications and work experience
- A research proposal of 500 words detailing the project you intend to work on
- A personal statement of up to 500 words explaining how you would like your career to develop over the next ten years and how studying for a doctorate will support you in this
All documents are to be submitted to [email protected].
Timeline of the application process:
- Applications are now closed.
- Applications shall be assessed by the committee throughout February and March 2025. During this process, the committee may request interviews with applicants.
- Acceptance and rejection letters shall be sent out in the first week of April 2025.
- Applicants must confirm their continuation on their doctoral programme by August 2025.
- The Scholarship shall be paid directly to the student in the first week after the commencement of their programme.
Previous Awardees:
Sarah Aziz is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. Her fields of interest include Classical Arabic literature, Islamic intellectual history, Shiism, and Sufism. For her dissertation, Sarah is focusing on al-Ṣaḥīfa al-Sajjādiyya (The Scroll of al-Sajjād), the prayer manual attributed to ʿAlī Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn (d. 712), which is arguably the earliest prayer manual in Islamic sources and one of the earliest examples of the Arabic-Islamic genre of prayer composed in ornate rhymed prose. Investigating the Ṣaḥīfa’s textual tradition, content, literary features, and reception, Sarah’s study breaks new ground in our understanding of the text’s literary and intellectual significance and overall function.
Mehdi Ali is a PhD candidate in the Department of Religion at University of Southern California, where he is completing his dissertation under the supervision of Dr. Sherman Jackson. Mehdi’s research focuses on Islamic legal and exegetical discourses using primary source materials in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu. His research focuses on developing a deeper understanding of the evolution of scriptural hermeneutics with respect to legal matters by examining law-focused, or fiqhi Quranic commentaries written by Imami scholars in the classical period.
Amir Mohammad Emami is a PhD candidate in Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. His research interests include the intellectual history of the Islamic world, particularly within the landscapes of Iran since the 17th century, and the intersections of Islamic scholarly disciplines of falsafa, kalām, and uṣūl al-fiqh with contemporary philosophy. He is currently working on a PhD thesis on the philosophical ideas of Mīrzā Mahdī Iṣfahānī (d. 1365/1946), the founder of the theological school of Maktab-i Maʿārif, also known as the Maktab-i Tafkīk (the School of Separation).
Mohammad Nabeel Jafri is a PhD candidate at the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto, and a Visiting Faculty at the Department of Social Sciences and Liberal Arts at the Institute of Business Administration, Karachi. His dissertation, “Orating Knowledge: Urdu Shiʿi khiṭābat in contemporary Karachi,” builds on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork in Karachi, Pakistan. “Orating Knowledge” examines the myriad emic contestations around both ʿilm and oratory, attending to debates prevalent among orators and their audiences.
Zahra Jafari is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Exeter in Arab and Islamic Studies. Her academic focus has been directed towards Shīʿī studies, ḥadīth and legal theory. Her ongoing doctoral research centres around treating ḥadīth contradictions by means of dissimulation (taqiyya) in Shīʿī ḥadīth literature, specifically in the works of the Akhbārī scholar Shaykh Yūsuf b. Aḥmad al-Baḥrānī (d. 1186/1772).
