Staff and fellows
Director
Professor Abdullah Saeed
Sultan of Oman Endowed Chair in Arab and Islamic Studies
Phone: +61 3 8344 6861
Fax: +61 3 9347 9542
Email: a.saeed@unimelb.edu.au
Staff profile
Abdullah Saeed holds degrees from Australia and overseas. He has a BA in Arab/Islamic Studies from Saudi Arabia, MA in Applied Linguistics and Doctor of Philosophy (Arts) in Islamic Studies from the University of Melbourne, Australia. In 1993, he joined the then Department of Asian Languages and Anthropology at the University of Melbourne as a Lecturer, rising to Senior Lecturer in 1996 and Associate Professor in 2000. He was appointed Sultan of Oman Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies in 2003.
Professor Saeed has taught Arabic and Islamic Studies at the undergraduate and graduate levels. He is involved in interfaith dialogue between Christians and Muslims, and between Jews and Muslims, and is a frequent and popular lecturer. He travels widely, visiting North America, Europe, Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia. He has a wide range of professional and research relationships around the world.
Deputy Director
Dr David Tittensor
Senior Lecturer in Islamic Studies, Asia Institute
Email: dtittensor@unimelb.edu.au
Staff profile
David Tittensor is a Senior Lecturer in Islamic Studies in the Asia Institute, Faculty of Arts. He is the author of The House of Service: The Gülen Movement and Islam's Third Way (Oxford University Press, 2014) and co-author (with Adam Possamai) of Religion and Change in Australia (Routledge, 2022).
Academic staff
Dr Muhammad Kamal
Senior Lecturer in Islamic Studies
Phone: +61 3 8344 8197
Fax: +61 3 9349 4870
Email: muhammad@unimelb.edu.au
Staff profile
Dr Muhammad Kamal is a Kurd originally from Iraq. He obtained a BA (Honours), MA and PhD in Philosophy at the University of Karachi and has a Diploma in Education from Teachers Institute in Erbil. He taught first as a lecturer and then as an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Karachi from 1985 to 1994. In 1992 he went to Germany on a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) scholarship for postdoctoral research and has been based in Australia since 1994.
Dr Christina Mayer
Senior Lecturer in Arabic
Phone: +61 3 8344 495
Email: cmayer@unimelb.edu.au
Staff profile
Dr Christina Mayer is the Convenor of the Arabic Program. She is a graduate of Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest (degrees in Arabic, Turkish and Russian studies, undergraduate training in Libya and the USSR), with an MA in Applied Linguistics and Doctor of Philosophy (Arts) in Arabic and Islamic Studies (both awarded by the University of Melbourne), with research conducted in Morocco, Egypt and Syria. She first started working at the University of Melbourne in 1989. She is a prolific textbook writer and material developer. Her research interests in Arabic studies include language teaching for specific purposes and in Islamic studies the role of magic in modern Arab societies, particularly in the lives of women.
Dr Rachel Woodlock
Lecturer in Islamic Studies (Teaching Specialist)
Email: rachel.woodlock@unimelb.edu.au
Rachel Woodlock is a Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne. She is an academic and writer who researches and teaches about Islam and Muslims.
Fellows and Associates
Hussain Mohi-ud-Din Qadri
Dr Hussain Mohi-ud-Din Qadri is a political scientist, economist, educationist and a scholar of religion and philosophy. He has written extensively on a wide range of topics and is the author of 25 books and over 50 research articles. He is currently the President of the Minhaj-ul-Quran International (an NGO, working in the areas of education, peace and counter-terrorism, women rights, children rights and poverty alleviation); Deputy Chairman of the Board of Governors of Minhaj University Lahore (renowned National University in Pakistan) and Chairman of Minhaj Education Society (an Organisation running over 650 schools and colleges all over Pakistan); and the Chairman of the Al-Mawakhat Islamic Micro-Finance. He is Associate Professor at the School of Economics and Finance, Minhaj University, Lahore.
Dr Ali Akbar
Dr Akbar was awarded his PhD on 18 April 2018. His thesis was nominated for the University of Melbourne’s Vice Chancellor’s Prize and a revised version was published in 2019 by Edinburgh University Press.
Dr Akbar’s research interests include Quranic interpretation and the re-examination of traditional theories of revelation in Islam. He has worked as a research associate, sessional lecturer and tutor for the Asia Institute. Dr Akbar has published a number of articles in peer reviewed journals in the fields of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, politics and international relations and a book titled The Political Discourse of Backwardness among Contemporary Iranian Intellectuals, which was published in 2018 in Persian by Farzan-e Ruz in Tehran.
Dr Akbar has presented papers at international conferences in Malaysia, Canada and France. In 2018 his paper ‘The Classical Islamic Laws of Apostasy in the Present Context’ was awarded best paper at the International Conference on Comparative Theology and Comparative Religion in Paris.
Associate Professor Richard Pennell
Associate Professor Richard Pennell did both his BA (in Arabic and Spanish) and his PhD (in Islamic History) at the University of Leeds in Britain. Before joining the History program at the University of Melbourne he taught for nine years, on and off, at the National University of Singapore. He taught for two years at the University of Nairobi, in Kenya, in the late 1980s and has also taught in Garyounis University in Benghazi, Libya and at Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey. In the second half of 2003 he was a visiting scholar hosted by Al-Akhawayn University, at Ifrane in the Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco.
Professional staff
Mary Wang
Executive Support Officer
Email: mary.wang@unimelb.edu.au