Asma Afsaruddin
Dr. Asma Afsaruddin is Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She is also the chair of the Board of Directors of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy and serves on the advisory committee of the Muslim World Initiative at the U.S. Institute of Peace and of Karama, a human and women's rights organization in Washington, DC. In 2003, she was a visiting scholar at the Centre for Islamic Studies at the School for Oriental and African Studies, London, UK, and was previously a fellow at the American Research Center of Egypt in Cairo and the American Research Institute of Turkey in Istanbul.
Among her research projects is a specially commissioned monograph on early Muslims and a book manuscript about competing perspectives on jihad and martyrdom in Islamic thought. Her research has won funding from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, among others, and she was named a Carnegie Scholar for 2005 by the Carnegie Corporation. She is the author and/or editor of four books, including The First Muslims: History and Memory (2008) and Excellence and Precedence: Medieval Islamic Discourse on Legitimate Leadership (2002).