Indiana University’s Islamic Studies Program has been around, in one guise or another, for decades. Beginning in 2009, the Program was reinvigorated and restructured, and since 2014 we have been a part of the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.
In 2010, the Program received funding from the US Department of Education to award Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships to undergraduate and graduate students during the 2010-2014 academic years and summers. The Program was again successful in its bid for FLAS Fellowships in 2018 and 2022.
The Program’s mission is first and foremost the advancement of research in all Islam-related fields. We develop and host a broad range of academic programs and initiatives on the Bloomington campus that enable meaningful scholarly encounters, as well as research opportunities for our students (such as scholarships that pair undergraduate students with faculty for a semester, in which the students experience first-hand what it means to conduct research as a scholar). We also offer a Certificate in Islamic Studies to undergraduates and we facilitate access to knowledge through several initiatives (an online portal under construction; partnership with DISC - Digital Islamic Studies Curriculum, etc.).
At IU, we enjoy collaboration with numerous departments, centers, and institutes. We’re especially proud of IU’s language offerings in “Islamic” languages (both Muslim majority and minority regions) that include offerings in Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Azeri, Bamana, Bengali, Bosnian, Chaghatay, Dari, French, Gujarati, Indonesian, Kazakh, Kurdish, Kyrgyz, Ottoman, Pashto, Persian, Russian, Swahili, Tajik, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Urdu, Uyghur, Uzbek, and Wolof, among others. Indiana University also has Language Flagship Programs in Arabic, Chinese, and Russian (and until recently, Turkish), and the Hamilton Lugar School hosts the Center for Languages of the Central Asian Region, and the National African Languages Resource Center.
Please explore the following pages to learn more about our diverse research portfolio, faculty and students, as well as current and past projects. If you have any questions or suggestions, please write to us at islmprog@iu.edu.