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Marco Demichelis

Lecturer, Gregorian Centre for Interreligious Studies, Pontificia Università Gregoriana

Marco Demichelis (Torino, 1979). I am Senior Research Fellow in Islamic Studies and History of Middle East within the ICS at the University of Navarra and Adjunct Prof. at the Pontificial Gregoriana University, Centre for Inter-religious studies. I reached Spain after having won a Marie Curie Fellow (IF 2016) sponsored by the same University; however, before it, I had been post-Doctoral Research Fellow within the Dept. of Religious Studies at the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Milan (2013-2016) and as Adjunct Prof. in History of Islamic World at the University of Turin (2010-2012).
My main research interests concern the Islam-Christian dialogue through a theological discourse, with a specific expertise on Kalam and Islamic Eschatology; Islamic and Western contemporary narratives as Orientalism and Occidentalism, but also Suprematicism and counter-Hegemonic ones; finally, as Historian of Islam but with an international relations and political background, my research and publications overlap in interdisciplinary expertise that from the formative Islamic age and its Classical Thought (IX-XIV centuries) reached the Nahda during the colonialism and the Cold War.
In the last years I edited for Gorgias Press (eds. with Paolo Maggiolini, 2017), The Struggle to Define a Nation: Rethinking Religious Nationalism in the Contemporary Islamic World, while a monographic work entitled Salvation and Hell in Classical Islamic Thought: Can Allah Save Us All? has been published by Bloomsbury Academic (2018). A second edited work, entitled: Religious violence. Political ends. Nationalism, citizenship and radicalizations in the Middle East and Europe, has been edited by OLMS, Religion and Society series too (2018). I published several essays in Italian: Il Pensiero Mu‘tazilita (PhD Diss. Torino/Paris: L’Harmattan, 2011), Storia dei Popoli Arabi. Dal Profeta Muhammad al XXI secolo (Torino: Anakelab, 2ed. 2015), L'Islam Contemporaneo. Sfide e Riflessioni tra Modernità e Modernismo (Torino: Anankelab, 2016), Etica Islamica. Ragione e Responsabilità (Milano: Edizioni Paoline, 2016) while my academic articles have been released on Oriente Moderno, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Aram, Parole de l’Orient, Arab Studies Quarterly, Archiv Orientalni, Annali di Scienze Religiose, Religions and ReOrient.

I also attended different period of research and Visiting during my academic career: Ifpo in Damascus (2007 and 2011), Birzeit University (2008-2009), Yale University (2014), Bamberg Universität (2017) and Catholic University of Lyon (2018).

Experience

  • 2017–present
    Senior Research Fellow in Islamic Studies and Middle Eastern History, Institute for Culture and Society, University of Navarra
  • 2013–2017
    Research Fellow in Islamic Studies and Middle Eastern History, Catholic University of Milan
  • 2010–2012
    Adjunct professor in History of Islamic World, University of Turin

Grants and Contracts

  • 2016
    Marie Curie IF
    Role:
    Marie Curie Research Fellow in Islamic Studies and Middle Eastern history
    Funding Source:
    Horizon 2020
  • 2013
    Assegno di Ricerca
    Role:
    Catholic University of Milan
    Funding Source:
    Italian Minister of Education and Academic research
  • 2007
    PhD Italian Scholarship
    Role:
    University of Genoa, Dept. of Political Studies
    Funding Source:
    Italian Minister of Education and Academic research