Ibn 'arabi Society

Gregory Vandamme is a PhD candidate (FNRS-FRESH) working on classical Sufism, with a particular interest in the works of Ibn 'Arabi and his school. His research pays attention on transmission and transformation of doctrines from Early Sufism to Akbarian thought. He is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Louvain, Belgium

Dr Samer Akkach is Associate Professor of Architecture and Founding Director of the Centre for Asian and Middle Eastern Architecture (CAMEA) at the University of Adelaide, Australia. He was born and educated in Damascus before moving to Australia to complete his PhD at Sydney University. As an intellectual historian, Samer has devoted over twenty years to the study of Ibn 'Arabi's mystical thought and intellectual legacy, and especially to their later revival by Abd al-Ghana al-Nabulusi. His book Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam: an Architectural Reading of Mystical Ideas (SUNY 2005), traces the influence of Ibn 'Arabi's thought on the spatial sensibility of premodern Muslim architects. His further titles Abd al-Ghan al-Nabulusi: Islam and the Enlightenment (Oneworld 2007) and Letters of a Sufi Scholar: The Correspondence of Abd al-Ghana al-Nabulusi (Brill 2010) examine the intellectual contributions of this influential and prolific Sufi master who considered Ibn 'Arabi to be his spiritual master

Paolo Urizzi is the director of Perennia Verba, Italy. The interest in Perennial Wisdom has led him to deepen the metaphysical doctrines of Vedanta and Sufism, and his research has focused in particular on the notion of the "Seal of Saints".

At Haverford College (BA), then the University of Pennsylvania (MA), then the University of South Carolina (PhD), Eric Winkel undertook eclectic studies, mostly religion at first, focusing on spiritual matters, then later including political science, and numerous languages to enable study of religious and spiritual texts (Sanskrit, Greek, Coptic, Tamil, Arabic, others, besides French and German). His book "Mysteries of Purity, Ibn al-'Arabî's asrar al-taharah" (Notre Dame, 1995) was Chapter 68 of the Futuhat al-Makkiyya. While Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies in Malaysia, he explored how the concepts of the "new sciences" opened obscure and difficult passages of the Futuhat. Having studied Ibn Arabi's Futuhat al-Makkiyya for over twenty-five years, Eric Winkel is now in the midst of an eleven-year project to produce the first complete translation of this work.

Jane Clark is a Senior Research Fellow of the Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society and has worked particularly on the Society's Archiving Project as well as looking after the library. She has been studying Ibn Arabi for more than forty years, and is engaged in teaching courses and lecturing on his thought both in the UK (including Oxford University and Temenos Academy) and abroad (including Egypt, Australia and the USA), and in research and translation of the Akbarian heritage. She has a particular interest in the correlation of Ibn Arabi's thought with contemporary issues. She organises the MIAS Young Writers Award. Jane Clark was a co-founder of The Journal of Consciousness Studies and is currently editor of the Beshara Magazine. She has presented many courses as part of the program of the University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education.

Jane Carroll is a Senior Research Fellow of the Ibn Arabi Society and is Secretary of the Society in the US. She first studied the works of Ibn Arabi at the Beshara School in Scotland in the 1970s while concurrently studying at the Architectural Association in London with a specific interest in traditional geometry and Islamic architecture. She currently has a design practice in Ojai, California.

Pablo Beneito is currently Professor at the Department of Translation and Interpreting in the Faculty of Letters, University of Murcia, Spain. He has been studying the works of Ibn Arabi since he chose to do his doctorate in Arabic philology at the Complutense University of Madrid, after which he spent nine years teaching at the University of Seville in the Department of Arab and Islamic Studies. He has also been a visiting professor at the Sorbonne in Paris (Ecole Pratique des Hauts Etudes), in Kyoto University (ASAFAS) and in Toledo (Escuela de Traductores). As a specialist in Sufi thought, he has given courses throughout the world, and helped organise more than 14 international conferences. He heads MIAS Latina, an independent organisation affiliated to the Ibn Arabi Society, for speakers of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. He has edited and translated (into Spanish) Ibn Arabi's Mashahid al-asrar and Kashf al-ma'na. He is currently working on several of Ibn Arabi's shorter treatises, including Kitab al-Aba

Stephen Hirtenstein has been editor of the Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society since its inception in 1982, and is a co-founder of Anqa Publishing. He read History at King's College, Cambridge, and then studied at the Beshara School of Intensive Esoteric Education in Gloucestershire and Scotland. After a teaching career, he began writing and giving talks on Ibn 'Arabi's thought at conferences across the world. In addition to lecturing and writing, he organises and leads tours in the footsteps of Ibn 'Arabi. He currently works as a Senior Editor for the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, and is a Short courses tutor in the Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford. His publications include The Unlimited Mercifier – The spiritual life and thought of Ibn 'Arabi (1999), The Seven Days of the Heart Prayers for the nights and days of the week – Ibn 'Arabi's Awrad al-usbu (2000), Divine Sayings – 101 Hadith Qudsi – The Mishkat al-Anwar of Ibn 'Arabi (2004), and most recently The Alchemy

Pablo Beneito is currently Professor of the Translation and Interpretation Department in the Faculty of Letters at the University of Murcia. He has published editions and translations of several works of Ibn 'Arabi including Mashahid al-Asrar - Las contemplaciones de los misterios (with S. Hakim), which was translated into English as Contemplation of the Holy Mysteries together with Cecilia Twinch. He edited and translated into Spanish the Kashf al-ma'na - El secreto de los nombres de Dios, which has also appeared in French. In collaboration with Stephen Hirtenstein he edited and translated Ibn 'Arabi's Awrad al-usbu (Wird) - The Seven Days of the Heart. He is the editor of El Azufre Rojo (Red Sulfur: Journal of Studies on Ibn 'Arabi, which first appeared in 2014). He is a founder member and President of Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society-Latina (MIAS- Latina), established in 2011

Eric Winkel is working full-time on a translation of the entire al-Futuhat al-Makkiyah (The Openings Revealed in Makkah) based on the 2011 critical edition of Dr. Abd al-Aziz al-Mansoub, published in the Yemen. While at the Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies, in Malaysia, he combined his interest in mathematics and classical Islamic thought to explore the 'new sciences', finding 'unlocking keys' for some of the most obscure concepts in Ibn 'Arabi's work. In 2019 the Pir Press published Volume 1 of the translation (Books 1 and 2). Chapter One of the Futuhat translation can be downloaded in PDF form from the Futuhat Project website http://thefutuhat.com/

Jane Clark is a Senior Research Fellow of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, and has workedparticularly on the Society's Archiving Project as well looking after the library. She has been studying Ibn 'Arabi for more than forty years, and is engaged in teaching courses and lecturing on his thought both in the UK (including Oxford University, Temenos Academy) and abroad (including Egypt, Australia, USA), and in research and translation of the akbarian heritage. She has a particular interest in the correlation of Ibn 'Arabī's thought with contemporary issues; she was a co-founder of The Journal of Consciousness Studies, and is currently editor of Beshara Magazine. She organises the MIAS Young Writers Award.

James Morris (Boston College) has taught and published widely on Islamic and religious studies over the past 40 years at the Universities of Exeter, Princeton, Oberlin, and the Institute of Ismaili Studies in Paris and London, serving recently as visiting professor in Istanbul, Paris, and Jogjakarta. He has lived and studied in regions from Morocco to Indonesia, and he lectures and leads workshops in many countries on Islamic philosophy and theology, Sufism, the Islamic humanities (poetry, music, and visual arts), the Qur'an and hadith, and esoteric Shiism. Recently he has led interfaith study-abroad programs centering on sacred sites, pilgrimage, sainthood, and related arts and architecture in Turkey and France. His forthcoming books include Openings: From the Qur'an to the Islamic Humanities; Approaching Ibn 'Arabi: Foundations, Contexts, Interpretations; Ostad Elahi's "Demonstration of the Truth"; and "Servants of the All-Merciful": Ibn 'Arabi on Spiritual Practice and Realization.

Angela Jaffray (PhD Harvard University) is an independent scholar, specializing in the translation of and commentary on the short works of Ibn 'Arabi. Her translation of Ibn 'Arabi's al-Ittihad al-kawni (The Universal Tree and the Four Birds) was published by Anqa Publications in 2007 and her article “Watered with One Water: Ibn 'Arabi on the One and the Many” appeared in the Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society in 2008. Her most recent translation and commentary of Ibn 'Arabi's Isfar 'an nata'ij al-asfar (The Secrets of Voyaging), was published by Anqa Publications in 2015, reprinted in 2016. She divides her time between Jerusalem and Chicago.

Oludamini Ogunnaike is an assistant professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. He teaches courses on African and African Diasporic Religions as well as Islam, Islamic Philosophy, Spirituality, and Art. He holds a PhD in African Studies and the Study of Religion from Harvard University, and spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University's Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies. Professor Ogunnaike's research examines the philosophical dimensions of postcolonial, colonial, and pre-colonial Islamic and indigenous religious traditions of West and North Africa, especially Sufism and Ifa. He is currently working on a book entitled, Sufism and Ifa: Ways of Knowing in Two West African Intellectual Traditions and maintains a digital archive of West African Sufi poetry.

Stefan Sperl is Professor of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, at SOAS University of London. He was born in Stuttgart and brought up in Luxembourg. He studied Arabic at Oxford and the American University in Cairo and did his postgraduate research at SOAS, London. In 1978 he joined UNHCR and held several assignments in the Middle East and Geneva. He returned to SOAS 1988. His publications include Mannerism in Arabic Poetry (1989), Qasida Poetry in Islamic Asia and Africa (1996, with Christopher Shackle), as well as numerous articles on Arabic, Islamic and Refugee Studies. In 2005 he embarked on a research project with Ahmed Moustafa which resulted in their joint publication The Cosmic Script: Sacred Geometry and the Science of Arabic Penmanship (2014). It won the Iran World Award for the Book of the Year in 2016. He was co-organiser of the 2017 MIAS symposium 'Ibn Arabi and the Philosophers' at SOAS and in November 2017 organiser of the conference 'Faces of the I

Michael Sells is the professor of Islamic Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago. His publications on Arabic poetry, Sufism, and mystical language include Desert Tracings: Six Classic Arabian Odes (1989); Mystical Languages of Unsaying (1994); Stations of Desire: Love Elegies from Ibn ʿArabī and New Poems (2000); Early Islamic Mysticism (1996); and the Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, al-Andalus (2000, which he coedited with Maria Rosa Menocal and Raymond Scheindlin). His essay "Love", which compares differing configurations of the "religion of love" in Arabic love poetry and his translation of the Nuniyya, a poem by the Andalusian poet of courtly love Ibn Zaydun, appear in the same al-Andalus volume. Qur'anic Studies Today, which he coedited with Angelika Neuwirth and to which he contributed an essay on the Moses story in Sura 20, appeared in 2015. He is currently working on a complete bi-lingual edition and translation of Ibn 'Arabi's Tarjuman al-Ashwaq.

Stephen Hirtenstein has been editor of the Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society since its inception in 1982, and is a co-founder of Anqa Publishing. He read History at King's College, Cambridge, and then studied at the Beshara School of Intensive Esoteric Education in Gloucestershire and Scotland. After a teaching career, he began writing and giving talks on Ibn 'Arabi's thought at conferences across the world. In addition to lecturing and writing, he organises and leads tours in the footsteps of Ibn 'Arabi. He currently works as a Senior Editor for the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, and is a Short courses tutor in the Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford. His publications include The Unlimited Mercifier – The spiritual life and thought of Ibn 'Arabi (1999), The Seven Days of the Heart Prayers for the nights and days of the week – Ibn 'Arabi's Awrad al-usbu (2000), Divine Sayings – 101 Hadith Qudsi – The Mishkat al-Anwar of Ibn 'Arabi (2004), and most recently The Alchemy

Heba Youssry is currently the Director of Manor House International School in Egypt. She holds a double BA in the fields of Business Administration and Philosophy and a double MA in Arabic Literature and Philosophy all of which were attained from the American University in Cairo. She formerly held the position of Country Director for an NGO called Seeds of Peace, where she worked on establishing communication links between teenagers in countries impacted by the Middle Eastern conflict. Also, she worked as a freelance literary critic for Egypt Independent, an English language newspaper.

Atif Khalil is an Associate Professor at the University of Lethbridge's Department of Religious Studies where he teaches courses on Islamic theology, mysticism, art and world religions. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Repentance and the Return to God in Early Sufism (SUNY, 2018). Last year, he was the Ken'an Rifai Distinguished Professorship of Islamic Studies at the Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies at Peking University in China

Eric Winkel has studied Ibn 'Arabi's Futuhat al-Makkiyah for twenty-five years and is now in the midst of an eleven-year project to produce the first complete translation of this work. While Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies in Malaysia, Dr. Winkel explored how the concepts of the "new sciences" opened obscure and difficult passages of the Futuhat al-Makkiyah