Dr. Celene Ibrahim, Muslim Chaplain

Education:

Ph.D. Brandeis University
M.Div. Harvard University
B.A. Princeton University

Biography:

Celene Ibrahim was appointed Muslim Chaplain at Tufts University in 2014. In this role, Dr. Ibrahim offers mentorship and support to students across Tufts University schools and helps to coordinate programs and activities related to Muslim life on campus. She also supports Tufts staff and faculty and collaborates with departments and programs across the university on projects related to Islam, Muslims, and religion in the contemporary world. In collaboration with the wider chaplaincy team, Dr. Ibrahim helps to foster opportunities for civic learning and leadership.

She has previously served as Islamic Studies Scholar-in-Residence on the faculties of Andover Newton Theological School and Hebrew College, as Co-Director of the Center for Inter-Religious and Communal Leadership Education, and as a faculty affiliate and lecturer at the Center for Jewish Christian and Muslim Relations at Merrimack College. She currently teaches academic courses on Islam through the Boston Islamic Seminary and Hartford Seminary and is an affiliate of the Miller Center for Interreligious Learning and Leadership.

Dr. Ibrahim’s work is published widely  in academic and popular forums in the fields of Islamic intellectual history, interreligious studies, Islamic family law, and Muslima theology. Her first book, One Nation, Indivisible: Transcending Fear from the Pulpit to the Streets, is an anthology comprised of the wisdom of contemporary religious leaders and activists in America and is forthcoming in 2019 from Wipf & Stock Publishers. Her second book project on female figures in the Qur’an is currently under review with three prominent university presses, and her current research focuses on female figures in the biography of the Prophet Muhammad.

Dr. Ibrahim has given hundreds of lectures around the United States and has received many awards and fellowships in recognition of her research and leadership, including being recognized as a Mellon Fellow at Brandeis University, as a Presidential Scholar at Harvard Divinity School, and as a Fellow in Religion, Diplomacy, and International Relations at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. She currently serves on the boards of The Feminist Studies in Religion Forum and Convergence on Campus and is a member of the Harvard Divinity School Alumni/ae Council as well as the Multifaith Chaplaincy initiative of Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. She regularly travels internationally, and her work has been highlighted by the Religion Initiative of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Dr. Ibrahim earned a Bachelor’s degree in Near Eastern Studies with highest honors from Princeton University and was the first to earn a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University with a focus in Islamic studies and Muslim leadership. She holds a Doctorate of Philosophy with a concentration in Arabic and Islamic Civilizations and a Master of Arts in the fields of Women and Gender Studies and Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University. She is an alumna of the United World College-USA.

Dr. Ibrahim is deeply committed to Islamic scholarship, to fostering interreligious learning environments, and to civic activism. She resides in New Hampshire where she enjoys spending time outdoors with friends and family.