Current Dissertation Writing Scholarship recipients
2025
Seddigheh Kardan
McGill University, Canada
Dissertation title: Shahrastānī and the Ismāʿīlī Daʿwah: Investigating Shahrastānī’s Influence By and On the Missionaries (dāʿīs) and Thoughts of the Fāṭimid and Nizārī Periods.
Rami Gargour
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto in Canada
Dissertation title: Advancing the Learner Profile and International Mindedness of the International Bachelorette (IB): Exploring School Leaders’ Perceptions and Practices across the four the Aga KhanA title granted by the Shah of Persia to the then Ismaili Imam in 1818 and inherited by each of his successors to the Imamate. Academies Globally.
A list of our scholarship award alumni and their research areas
2024
Vineet Gupta
PhD (Religion) at the Graduate Department of Religion, Vanderbilt University, Nashville (USA)
Dissertation Title: The Da‘i: Articulating Authority among Da’udi BohrasA subdivision of Tayyibi Mustaʿli Ismailis. of South Asia, 1787-1921.
2023
Timothy Garrett (Islamic Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles)
Dissertation title: Ma‘āṣim al-hudā wa-al-iṣāba fī tafḍīl ‘Alī ‘alā al-ṣaḥāba, an understudied work by the famed Fatimid scholar Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī.
2011
Shatha Almutawa (University of Chicago)
Dissertation title: The Use of Narrative in Rasa’il Ikhwan al-Safa: Imagination at the Intersections of Religion, Philosophy and Science
2010
Farès Gillon (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris)
Dissertation title: Un traité ismaélien primitif, le Kitâb al-Kashf (Livre du dévoilement) attribué au Dâ’î Ja’far B
Mansûr al-Yaman (présentation, édition, traduction, commentaire)
2009
Maryann Shenoda (Harvard University)
Dissertation title: Imagining Persecution: Copto-Arabic Opposition to Islamisation and Arabisation in Fatimid Egypt
2008
Jamel A. Velji (University of California at Santa Barbara)
Dissertation title: Apocalyptic Hermeneutics and the Strengthening of Empire: The Case of the Early Fatimids
2007
Zackery M. Heern (University of Utah)
Dissertation title: Laying Foundations for Orthodoxy: Transformation of Shi’ism during the Time of Muhammad Baqir Bihbihani
2006
Jennifer Pruitt (Harvard University)
Dissertation title: A Tale of Two Cities: Locating the Courtly and the Urban in Classical Fatimid Visual Culture (975-1036 CE)
2005
Hasan Ali Khan (School of Oriental and African Studies)
Dissertation title: Shi‘a Connections of the Sufi Heritage of the Indus Valley: With Special Reference to Ismaili Monuments
2004
Aliaa Ezz El Din El Sandouby (University of California, Los Angeles)
Dissertation title: Remembering the Ahl al-Bayt: The Shrines of the Family of the Prophet in Cairo, Damascus and Aleppo
2003
Orkhan Mir-Kasimov (Sorbonne University)
Dissertation title: A Study of ancient Hurufi texts and manuscripts
2002
Samer Traboulsi (Princeton University)
Dissertation title: The Tayyibi Isma‘ilis in Medieval Yemen: A Case Study in the Formation of an Islamic Sect
David Hollenberg (University of Pennsylvania)
Dissertation title: Interpretation after the End of Days: The Isma‘ili spokesman Ja‘far ibn Mansur al Yaman (d. ca. 980 CE) on Prophets and Politics
2001
Elisabeth Alexandrin (McGill University)
Dissertation title: The Sphere of Walayah: Isma‘ili Ta’wil in Practice according to al-Mu’ayyad (d. 1078 CE)