Deina Abdelkader

Dr. Deina Abdelkader is an associate professor in the Political Science Department and a research affiliate at the Center for Middle East Studies, Harvard University. Dr. Abdelkader is the director of the Peace and Conflict Studies program. She is a comparitivist and international relations specialist. Her scholarly interests and research focus on the Middle East and North Africa, comparative democratization in the Muslim World, Islamic activism, and the role of Muslim women in religious interpretation.

She is the author of Social Justice in Islam (2000) and Islamic Activists: The Anti-Enlightenment Democrats (2011). She has also authored a number of articles; her latest are “Coercion, Peace and the Issue of Jihad” in the Digest of Middle East Studies, and a book chapter titled “Modernity, Islam and Religious Activism” in The New Global Order and the Middle East. Dr. Abdelkader is also one of two women on the Islamic Jurisprudential Council of North America (Fiqh Council of North America) and she is part of the editorial board of the Digest of Middle East Studies. Dr. Abdelkader is also a founding member and codirector of the International Relations and Islamic Studies Research Cohort (Co-IRIS).