Ophira Gamliel, Principal Investigator
I am a lecturer in South Asian Religions at the University of Glasgow, specialising in the languages, literatures, and cultures of Kerala. I published a textbook: A Linguistic Survey of the Malayalam Language in Its Own Terms (Otto Harrassowitz 2020). I am interested in the intersections between language, performance, and ritual, based on fieldwork and documentation of shared festivals in temples, mosques, and churches in Kerala, as well as temple drama and dance. In the past decade I sought to radically revise and refine the history of Malabar Jews, and ventured into Indian Ocean history, material culture, and research on the India trade documents in the Cairo Genizah. My forthcoming book is Judaism in South India 849—1489: Relocating Malabar Jewry (ARC Humanities Press, 2024). My native language is Hebrew, and I am proficient in Sanskrit and Malayalam with working knowledge in Judeo-Arabic, Arabic, Aramaic, and Tamil. View a CV and list of publications.
Ines Weinrich, Principal Investigator
I am an Arabic and Islamic Studies scholar and ethnomusicologist with a strong interest in the mediality of texts and the dynamics between oral and written texts. Prior to this project, I worked on contemporary Muslim chant and on pre-modern Arabic mawlid texts. In the project, I am responsible for the Arabic source texts. My aim is to treat the Arabic tellings not merely as ‘containers’ of information but to read them as part of Arabic literature. These texts do not only interact with the Malayalam and Hebrew tellings but with Arabo-Muslim traditions of exegesis, hadith transmission, encyclopaedic and prosopographical literature as well as the genres of preaching, poetry, and storytelling. I am a professor of Islamic Studies at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena. Before coming to Jena, I was a researcher at the University of Münster’s Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies and part of the Leibnizpreis Research Unit “Arabische Literatur und Rhetorik Elfhundert bis Achtzehnhundert” (ALEA). View a CV and list of publications.
Luca Rizzo, Postdoctoral Researcher
I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, currently working on the HiMuJe Project, with a focus on Arabic texts that relate the advent of Islam to the Malabar region. My previous research has centred on Arabic rhetoric and stylistics, literary aesthetics, and semiotics. I was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the CRC 1385 “Law and Literature”, where I explored the relationship between Arabic rhetoric, Islamic theology, and law. I was also affiliated with ALEA (Arabische Literatur und Rhetorik Elfhundert bis Achtzehnhundert), and subsequently with the DFG Long Term Project “Edition des Gesamtwerkes von Ibn Nubātah al-Miṣrī (1287-1366)” at the University of Münster. View a CV and list of publications.
Renu Elizabeth Abraham, Research Assistant
I am a historian and Assistant Professor at the Jindal School of International Affairs, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat. My research explores history writing in the Indian Ocean with a focus on the Malabar Coast between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. I work with early modern Malayalam, Arabic, Portuguese and Dutch sources as well as the British colonial archives. View a CV and list of publications.
Digital Humanities
For our digital editions and data modelling, we work closely with the team of the Service Center for Digital Humanities at the University of Münster. Brian Aitken, Digital Humanities Research Officer at the University of Glasgow, is responsible for the website design and for the digital map. The Thuringian University and State Library (ThULB) supports the project by providing reliable hosting for the digital materials and collaborates with the researchers on the development of the online presentation.