Multi-year Research Initiative on Islam and Muslims

Abstract

This initiative stems from a series of individual meetings held in 1995-96 between the Director of the Humanities Research Institute (HRI), Dr Patricia O'Brien, and members of the humanities and social sciences faculties of the nine universities of the University of California system. Professors in different departments often expressed the need for time in which to examine issues that have risen out of movements associated with Islam and with Muslim communities which have taken place during the twentieth century, especially in recent decades. Faculty acknowledged the large body of work that has been done on these topics, but stressed the need for specialists in the different fields intersecting them to examine the given issues together, in a research setting, for an extended period.