Religion professor profiled by American Academy of Religion

Nelly Van Doorn-Harder, professor of Islamic studies, was featured in the American Academy of Religion (AAR)’s “Religious Studies News.”

Van Doorn-Harder served as the chair of the organization’s program committee for the past three years.  The interview outlines the various new policies and initiatives that were put in place during her tenure.

Van Doorn-Harder is the author of several works on Coptic Christianity and Indonesian Islam, including “The Emergence of the Modern Coptic Papacy: The Egyptian Church and Its Leadership from the Ottoman Period to the Present” (AUC Press, 2011). 

The AAR is a learned society and professional association of teachers and research scholars with about 9,000 members who teach in some 900 colleges, universities, seminaries and schools in North America and abroad.

Van Doorn-Harder has served in the leadership of a number of program units in the AAR. She served as chair of the Study of Islam Section from 2004–2008. She founded and has chaired the Middle Eastern Christianity Group since 2009, and she served on the AAR’s Governance Task Force, which revamped the AAR’s entire governance structure, from 2008–2010.