Ibn 'arabi Society

MARIA DAKAKE, researches and publishes on Islamic intellectual history, Quranic studies, Shi'ite and Sufi traditions, and women's spirituality and religious experience. She has just completed work on a major colloaborative project to produce the first HarperCollins Study Quran, a verse-by-verse commentary on the Quranic text

MOHAMMED RUSTOM is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at Carleton University. He is the author of the award-winning book The Triumph of Mercy: Philosophy and Scripture in Mulla Sadra and Assistant Editor of The Study Quran: A New Translation with Notes and Commentary (Editor-in-Chief, Seyyed Hossein Nasr).

Zachary Markwith is a doctoral student and instructor at the Graduate Theological Union where he specializes in early Islamic spirituality and comparative religious studies. He is the author of One God, Many Prophets: the Universal Wisdom of Islam, and is writing his dissertation on sanctity in the life and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.

Michael Sells is Professor of Islamic History and Literature at the University of Chicago. He teaches courses on the Qur'an, Islamic love poetry, comparative mystical literature, Arabic Sufi poetry, Arabic religious texts, and Ibn 'Arabi. His publications include: Approaching the Quran: the Early Revelations (2007) and Mystical Languages of Unsaying (1994). He is also well-known for his translations of Arabic poetry including Desert Tracings: Six Classic Arabian Odes (1989) and Stations of Desire - Love Elegies from Ibn 'Arabi And New Poems (2000). John Mercer is an actor and writer, and formerly the Secretary of the Ibn 'Arabi Society and a founding member

Michael Sells is Professor of Islamic History and Literature at the University of Chicago. He teaches courses on the Qur'an, Islamic love poetry, comparative mystical literature, Arabic Sufi poetry, Arabic religious texts, and Ibn 'Arabi. His publications include: Approaching the Quran: the Early Revelations (2007) and Mystical Languages of Unsaying (1994). He is also well-known for his translations of Arabic poetry including Desert Tracings: Six Classic Arabian Odes (1989) and Stations of Desire - Love Elegies from Ibn 'Arabi And New Poems (2000)

Jaume Flaquer is a Jesuit priest and Professor of Interreligious Dialogue in the Faculty of Theology of Catalonia in Barcelona. He holds a PhD in Islamic Studies from the Sorbonne; his thesis was on Jesus according to the Sufi mystic Ibn 'Arabi. Publications include Christianity and Fundamentalism (1997) and Travelling Lives (2007). He gave a paper at the Second International Symposium of the MIAS-Latina in 2013 on The Spiritual Qualities of Jesus according to Ibn 'Arabi.

Stephen Hirtenstein has been editor of the Society’s Journal for 30 years. He is co-founder and director of Anqa Publishing and author of The Unlimited Mercifier, a spiritual biography of Ibn 'Arabi. He has translated the Mishkat al-Anwar, Ibn 'Arabi’s collection of hadith qudsi, and three of Ibn 'Arabi's shorter treatises including The Four Pillars of Spiritual Transformation (2008). He has lectured around the world and leads courses at the University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education. He was awarded the first Tarjuman Prize by MIAS-Latina in 2012 (along with Maurice Gloton)

Yafiah Katherine Randall is a doctoral student in the department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Winchester. Her thesis investigates Sufism among Israeli Jews and Muslims in Israel and explores its potential contribution to reconciliation and conflict transformation

Dr. Kazuyo Murata is a lecturer in Islamic Studies at King's College London. Her ongoing work includes a study of the so-called jamal-parasti ("adoration of beauty") in the history of Sufism, also an investigation of the Quran commentary by Ruzbihan Baqli Shirazi, with a particular attention to his understanding of prophets.

Omer Colakoglu teaches English at a school in Istanbul, and continues to work as a translator between Turkish and English. He has translated 14 books (two of them into English, the others into Turkish), and hundreds of articles. He is part-way through an MA program in Fatih University's School of Divinity

Dr Cyrus Ali Zargar is Assistant Professor in Religion at Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois, in the USA. He is interested in using the study of literature in Persian and Arabic, especially lyric poetry, to explore Sufism and Shi'i mysticism. He recently published Sufi Aesthetics, which explores the spiritual writings and poetry of Ibn al-'Arabi and Fakhr al-Din 'Iraqi (d. 1289)

Prof. Georg Bossong has been full professor of Romance philology (especially Ibero-Romance linguistics) at the University of Zurich since 1994, and visiting professor at many other universities. Some of his published articles can be downloaded from his web page at the University of Zurich. He is currently preparing a translation of the Tarjuman al-Ashwaq into German

Jane Clark is a teacher and independent scholar who has been studying Ibn 'Arabi for more than thirty years. She is a Senior Research Fellow of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, working particularly on the Society's archiving project. Her recent publications include "Establishing Ibn 'Arabi’s Heritage" (JMIAS 2013) and "Towards a Biography of Sadr al-diin al-Qunawi" (JMIAS 2011)

Olga Louchakova-Schwartz is Professor of Psychology and Comparative Religion at Sofia University and spiritual teacher in the traditions of Advaita Vedanta, Kindalini, Yoga and Prayer of the Heart. Her numerous publications cover a broad range of topics including autoimmune diseases of the nervous system, psychosomatic mysticism and non-dual consciousness

Nargis Virani is Assistant Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at The New School in New York City. She has a PhD from Harvard University. Her research explores intersections between The Qur'an and Literatures originating in Muslim milieu. She has just completed two books on Rumi's multilingual poetry: I am the Nightingale of the Merciful: Translation of Rumi's Multilingual Poems with an Introductory Essay, and Keeping God's Secrets: Multilinguality and Mystical Discourse

Todd Lawson is Associate Professor of Islamic Thought at the University of Toronto. He teaches courses on the Qur'an, Sufism, Shi'i Islam and related topics. His most recent book is Gnostic Apocalypse and Islam. He is now writing a book on the Qur'an as sacred epic.

Carl Ernst is a specialist in Islamic studies, with a focus on West and South Asia. He is the William P. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His most recent publications are How to Read the Qur'an: A New Guide, with Select Translations and Islamophobia in America.

William Chitick is Professor of Religious Studies at Stony Brook University and has published extensively on both Rumi and Ibn 'Arabi. His most recent books are In Search of the Lost Heart: Explorations in Islamic Thought and Divine Love: Islamic Literature and the Path to God

Wahid Amin is a D Phil candidate at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the development of post-Avicennan philosohy in the 13th Century with a special focus on Nasir al-Din al-Tusi and the school of Maragha philosophers

Mohammed Rustom is Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at Carleton University, Ottawa. He is the author of The Triumph of Mercy: Philosophy and Scripture in Mulla Sadra, and the main editor of an anthology of William Chittick's writings entitiled In Search of the Lost Heart: Explorations in Islamic Thought.