DR. LEILA CHAMANKHAH

Assistant Professor

Ph.D. in Islamic Studies

Ph.D. in Political Science

Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, United Kingdom

Tarbiat Modares University

leila.chamankhah@thapar.edu

I am a dual Ph.D. in Islamic studies (with specialization in Shia intellectual history) and political science (with specialization in Iranian studies). My areas of interest are Islamic studies, Shia intellectual history, Iranian Studies and Middle Eastern politics. Before leaving Iran in December 2012, I was an associate professor of political science at Islamic Azad University in my hometown, Kerman. After settling in Ohio, USA in 2013, I started teaching at the Department of Philosophy, University of Dayton (UD), and then joined the Department of Literature, University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in Spring 2021. I moved to India in April 2022 to teach Persian at Punjabi University, Patiala (PUP), and from December 2022 to March 2023 I worked as a visiting research scholar at Guru Gobind Singh Chair, PUP. My task was to translate Sikh texts including JAP Sahib (by Guru Gobind Singh) into Persian. My first book in English entitled “The Conceptualization of Guardianship in the Iranian Intellectual History (1800 -1989): Reading Ibn ?Arab?’s Theory of Wil?ya in the Sh??a World", has been published by Palgrave McMillan in September 2019. I also published several articles on different aspects of Islamic studies, Iranian studies, and Shi’a intellectual history.

 

PUBLICATIONS

• ?afarn?mah: A Glimpse into the Text and its Historical and Intellectual Context, International Journal of Islamic Khazanah (IJIK), IJIK, Vol. 13 No. 1: 11-17, DOI: 10.15575/ijik.v13i1.21293., https://journal.uinsgd.ac.id/index.php/ijik/issue/view/1070. 
• From Political Islam to Civil Religion: The Possibilities of a Pluralistic Constitution and its Impact on Human Rights in Post-Revolutionary Iran, TEOSOFI: Jurnal Tasawuf dan Pemikiran Islam, Java, Indonesia, http://jurnalfuf.uinsby.ac.id/index.php/teosofi/article/view/1890, Vol. 12, No. 1 (June 27, 2022): 125–144.
• Persianization of Shaykh?sm: The Doctrine of Rukn-i R?bi? from A?mad al-A?s??? to Kar?m Kh?n Kirm?n?, the Muslim World, 111:3, August 2021, pp. 299-335. 
• Dialogue with the Master: Early Sh??a Encounters with Akbar?an Mysticism, TEOSOFI: Jurnal Tasawuf dan Pemikiran Islam, Java, Indonesia, https://doi.org/10.15642/teosofi.2020.10.1.155-178, Vol. 10, No. 1 (June, 2020): 155-178.  
• Conflicting Worldviews: Shaykh A?mad A?s?’?’s Ris?lat al-Rasht?yah and the Problematic of Akbar?an Mysticism, Iranian Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/00210862.2020.1777392, published online 20 July 2020. 

Awards and Recognition

• Research Internship, Center for Islamic Shi’a Studies, London, UK (March 2016).
• Research Grant, the British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS), (December 2014). 
• DAAD Institute (German Academic Exchange Service), Host: Ludwig-Maximillians University, Munich, Germany (Summer 2009). 
• Master of Arts (MA) Thesis Award, Jah?d-i D?nishg?h?, Tehran, Iran (June 2001).