Dr Alex Henley
GPISH Programme Leader
- “A Spectre Haunts the Study of Sectarianism: Chasing the ghost of ‘religion’”. British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) annual conference, Canterbury, April 2021.
- “Locating Religion amid Sectarianisation: A religionisation approach to avoiding essentialism and reductionism”. Woolf Institute workshop on “Beyond ‘Sectarianism’? Towards an alternative understanding of identity politics”, University of Cambridge, 24-25 October 2019, fully funded.
- “Religion as a Category of Institutional Practice in Middle Eastern States”. Workshop on “Religion as a Changing Category of Muslim Practice”, University of Oxford, May 2019.
- “The Invention of Religious Leadership: Institutionalization of Islam in the modern Middle East”. Workshop on “’Religion’ in Muslim Traditions”, Williams College, MA, 4-5 May 2019, fully funded.
- “Mashyakhat al-‘Aql: The making of a modern Lebanese Druze institution”. Conference on “The Druze Millennium”, American University of Beirut, November 2018, fully funded.
- “Sectarianisation as the Construction of ‘Religion’: The case of ‘religious leaders’ in Lebanon”. Conference on “Rethinking Nationalism and Sectarianism”, University of Oxford, January 2018.
- “Religious Nationalism in the Official Culture of Multi-Confessional Lebanon”. British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) annual conference, Edinburgh, July 2017.
- “Representing Religions? The problematics of confessional representation in Lebanon”. Workshop on “Sources of Sectarianism”, Carnegie Middle East Center, Beirut, May 2016, fully funded.
- “Lebanon’s Powerful Religious Leaders: What do they tell us about sectarianism?”. Conference on “Sectarianism, Identity, and Conflict”, George Mason University, April 2016, fully funded.
- “New Roles of Religious Leaders at the Interface between Sect and State in Lebanon”. NAAIMS Conference, “Sectarianism in Muslim Communities”, Brown University, September 2015, fully funded.
- “Attachment to the State among Religious Authorities in Lebanon”. Middle East Studies Association (MESA) annual conference, New Orleans, October 2013.
- “Institutionalizing Islamic Religious Leadership in Lebanon: Mufti of Beirut to Mufti of Lebanon”. Al-Maktoum Islamic Studies Conference, Dundee, May 2012, fully funded.
- “The Politics of Clerical Leadership during the Lebanese Civil War, 1975-1990”. Workshop on “Official Religion”, Orient-Institut Beirut, Lebanon, September 2010, fully funded.
- “Militating Against Integration: the Maronites, their Church, and Lebanon”. Middle East Studies Association (MESA) annual conference, Washington DC, November 2008, part funded.
- Discussant for panel on “Muslims in the West: Dilemmas of Cultural Identity and Social and Political Integration”. Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies conference, Amman, Jordan, 29 September 2019.
- “How Europeans Invented Religion, and Why it Matters: Reflections from the Middle East”. Michael Mahony Lecture at Mansfield College, University of Oxford, 30 May 2019.
- “Understanding Literature as History and History as Literature since Foucault and Said”. Seminar in Literary Studies, University of Jordan, 10 April 2019.
- “The Invention of Religion in Islam? Tracing the emergence of Grand Muftis”. Interdisciplinary Research Seminar in the Study of Religion, University of Oxford, 8 February 2019. - “Clerical Sources of Sectarianism in the Middle East”. Policy panel, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC, 14 November 2017.
- “A Genealogy of ‘Religious Leadership’”. Faculty of Theology & Religion Seminar, University of Oxford, 10 May 2017.
- “Maronite Muftis and Muslim Patriarchs? The practice of religious leadership in multi-confessional Lebanon”. Oriental Institute Lecture Series on Eastern Christianity & Islam, University of Oxford, 2 May 2017.
