Ihsan Yilmaz

Ihsan Yilmaz is Research Professor and Chair of Islamic Studies and Intercultural Dialogue at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (ADI), Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia.

He has conducted research on nation-building; citizenship; ethnic-religious-political identities and their securitisation (Turkey); socio-legal affairs, identities, belonging and political participation of Muslim minorities in the West (the UK, Australia, and the USA); Islam-state-society relations in majority and minority contexts; global Islamic movements; political Islam in a comparative perspective; Turkish politics; authoritarianisation; Turkish diasporas (the UK, Australia); transnationalism; intergroup contact; and politics of victimhood.

His work appeared in international scholarly prestigious journals such as Third World Quarterly, Democratization, Australian Journal of International Affairs, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, The Middle East Journal, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies, Muslim World, Journal for Islamic Studies, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, and Turkish Studies.

He has been invited by several eminent think-tanks, universities and governmental bodies in many parts of the world as either key note speaker, guest lecturer or expert witness in areas related to his expertise.

Professor Yilmaz’s much-cited book “Muslim Laws, Politics and Society in Modern Nation States: Dynamic Legal Pluralism in England, Turkey and Pakistan (Routledge 2005, reprinted 2016)” has been a pathbreaker in the study of unofficial Islamic legal pluralism in secular nation-states.

Professor Yilmaz is also a public intellectual, communicating directly with the general public his ideas, opinions and research findings. He has been actively using Twitter for the last decade and has about 195.000 followers.

He has been interviewed by several international TV and radio news channels and newspapers such as CNN International, Al Jazeera, ABC, China State TV, Russia Today, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, El Pais, Le Temps, Al Ahram, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. He was a columnist for the English-language daily newspaper Today’s Zaman where he wrote twice a week (2007-2016), wrote three times a week for Meydan Gazetesi (2015-2016), and had his weekly TV political debate programme on Samanyolu TV (2014-2015).

He was professor of political science at Istanbul Fatih University (2008-2016), casual lecturer in law, social sciences and politics at SOAS, University of London (2001-2008) where he taught “Islamic Law and Society”, “Legal Systems of Asia and Africa” and “Turkish Politics” at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Before SOAS, he was a fellow at Center for Islamic Studies, University of Oxford (1999-2001) where he worked on Muslim political participation in the UK and unofficial Muslim laws of young Muslims in the West.