Professor Esra Özyürek – Academic Director
Esra Özyürek joined the University of Cambridge after having taught at the London School of Economics and University of California, San Diego. Esra's research explores the tension between the universalism and particularism of globally appealing religious and post-religious belief and value systems. She has published widely, including Being German, Becoming Muslim: Race, Religion, and Conversion in the New Europe (2015), Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey (2006) and 'Muslim Minorities as Germany’s Past Future: Islam Critics, Holocaust Memory, and Immigrant Integration' (2019).
Dr Daniel Weiss – Chair of CIP Management Committee
Daniel H. Weiss is Senior Lecturer in Jewish Studies in the Divinity Faculty, having joined the Faculty in 2010, after previously teaching at the University of Virginia and at Oberlin College. He earned his PhD at the University of Virginia, after having received his Bachelor's degree from Princeton University and a Masters of Theological Studies degree from Harvard Divinity School. Dr Weiss's research interests include the study of Judaism, theories and practices of interreligious communication, and philosophy of religion.
Dr Giles Waller – Teaching Associate in Christian Theology & Research Associate in Inter-Faith Relations
Giles Waller joined the team in 2014. Formerly assisting CIP’s former Director Professor David Ford, he is now Teaching Associate in Christian Theology. Giles read Theology and Religious Studies at Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he also completed an MPhil. His doctoral research, also at Peterhouse, focused on the borderlands of Christian doctrine, literature, and philosophy, looking at the theological reception of Greek tragedy, with a particular comparative interest in Martin Luther’s theology of the cross. In 2011, along with Kevin Taylor, Giles edited a collection that brought together theologians and literary scholars, Christian Theology and Tragedy: Theologians, Tragic Literature and Tragic Theory (Ashgate), to which he contributed an essay on the role of tragedy in the work of Donald MacKinnon.
Dr Safet HadžiMuhamedović – Research Associate in Inter-Faith Relations
Safet HadžiMuhamedović is an anthropologist of sacred landscapes, syncretism and inter-faith relations. He earned his PhD in Anthropology from Goldsmiths, an MPhil in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge and BA degrees in History of Art and Sociology from the University of Sarajevo and Kenyon College. He has conducted long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Bosnia, as well as stints of research in Palestine, Israel and the Basque Country. Safet joined the CIP team in 2020, after convening anthropological courses on landscapes, religion, gender, kinship, Islam, social theories, politics, economics and research methods at SOAS University of London, the University of Bristol, Goethe University Frankfurt and Goldsmiths University of London. His current major project investigates syncretic cosmologies and subterranean rivers in south Bosnia. Safet is the author of Waiting for Elijah: Time and Encounter in a Bosnian Landscape (2018) and the co-editor (with Marija Grujić) of Post-Home: Dwelling on Loss, Belonging and Movement (2019). At CIP, Safet is the PI on the Shared Sacred project, supported by the Public Engagement Starter Fund and a co-convenor of the CIP Academic Summer School in Inter-Faith Relations 2021.
Dr Julia Snyder – Research Associate
Julia Snyder joined the Faculty of Divinity in 2020. She completed her PhD in New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Edinburgh, and worked as a lecturer and researcher at the University of Tübingen and the University of Regensburg before coming to Cambridge. Her areas of research include both early Christian texts and contemporary interfaith relations.
Dr Iona Hine – Communications and Programme Manager
Iona Hine returned to the Divinity Faculty in 2021, having completed an undergraduate Theology degree twenty years earlier. Outside academia, Iona has worked for the Church of England (as Mail Order & Web Manager of Church House Bookshop) and in secondary education (PGCE Religious Studies, Roehampton 2007). Iona's PhD, a study of early modern bible translation focused on the book of Ruth, was undertaken at the University of Sheffield, UK in 2014. A related article, 'Modelled on Zurich: a fresh study of Miles Coverdale's 1535 bible', won the 2021 Fredson Bowers Memorial Prize for outstanding textual scholarship. At Sheffield, Iona has worked as a research associate in Digital Humanities, most recently producing a free open access digital edition of H.W. Cassirer's collected works (cassirer.org, 2021). Iona has a track record of supporting impactful research and a specialism in public engagement, inputting to REF case studies in 2014 and 2021. Contributions to teaching in History and English at Sheffield led to Iona's recognition as a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Iona also has an MA in Jewish-Christian Relations (CJCR/APU, 2003).