Graduate Workshop · Summer 2026
SRI Graduate Workshop
This summer, the Shi‘a Research Institute hosted its inaugural Graduate Workshop, bringing together a cohort of doctoral students whose research centres on Shi‘i studies for two days of scholarly exchange at Regis St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto. The workshop responded to a challenge familiar to anyone working in a small field: the dissertation years can be long and isolating, and emerging scholars often struggle to find interlocutors who know their tradition and their specific area of research. The workshop was designed as a space where this core group could learn from one another, engage senior scholars in the field, and begin building the sustained intellectual community that early-career scholarship depends on. Its aim was to establish a strong academic support network for graduate students and early-career scholars working on Shi‘i studies.
Over two days, participants shared their dissertation work across a series of presentations, joined a roundtable on methodologies and approaches in Islamic and Shi‘i studies with senior scholars in the field, worked through a primary-source reading seminar on Shī‘ī ḥadīth drawn from their own research, and sat down with the SRI Principal to discuss the place of Shi‘i studies within the academy, closing with a conversation on how to carry this momentum forward.
Participants
Shabbir Agha Abbas
University of Arizona
Islamic intellectual history across the Persianate world, with a focus on Twelver Shi‘ism and Sufism
Zain Al-Attar
University of California, Berkeley
The Twelver reception of Akbarian metaphysics and Avicennan epistemology
Sarah Aziz
Harvard University
Early Islamic prayer literature and its commentarial traditions
Reza Hemyari
University of Chicago
Twelver Shi‘i law and legal theory in the 19th and 20th centuries
Mehreen Zahra Jiwan
Columbia University
Sacred space and geography during the Imamate at Sāmarrāʾ and the early occultation period
Atiyeh Taghiei
University of California, Los Angeles
Premodern pilgrimage (ziyāra) and liturgical texts across sectarian lines
Mentoring Scholars
Prof. Rula AbisaabMcGill University
Prof. Sajjad RizviUniversity of Exeter
Dr. Mathieu TerrierEPHE, Paris
Sayyid Muhammad RizviSRI Principal
Dr. Vinay KhetiaSRI Academic Director
We were glad to welcome this group of emerging scholars to Toronto, and we hope this gathering is the beginning of many more conversations to come. Our sincere thanks to Regis College and Dean Jaroslav Skira, Dean of the Regis St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology, University of Toronto, for hosting us in their beautiful building.