Dörthe Engelcke to serve as acting head of the Centre of Expertise for the Law of Arab and Islamic Countries
The research group “Changes in God’s Law - An Inner-Islamic Comparison of Family and Succession Laws”, first initiated at the Institute in 2009, has been transformed into the Centre of Expertise for the Law of Arab and Islamic Countries. Dörthe Engelcke, senior research fellow at the Institute since 2017 and an expert in the family law of Islamic countries, has been appointed its acting head as of 1 August 2024.
The founder and long-standing head of the Research Group, Prof. Dr Nadjma Yassari, took over as Director of the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law (SIR) in Lausanne on 1 August 2024. With “Changes in God’s Law”, she created a globally unique research unit that studied the law of Islamic countries from comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives. The central activities and projects of the Research Group, such as the preparation of expert opinions for courts, the lecture series "Afternoon Talks on Islamic Law", and the information portal "Familienrecht im Nahen Osten" [Family Law in the Middle East] will continue under Engelcke's leadership.
Dr. Dörthe Engelcke completed coursework in Islamic studies and Near and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Hamburg, the Institut National des Langues et des Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) Paris, and University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). She was awarded her doctoral degree by St Antony’s College at the University of Oxford. She has held fellowships at the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School and at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg of the Göttingen Institute of Advanced Study. Her main fields of research are Islamic law, the family law of Islamic countries, and the personal status laws applied by Christian communities in the Middle East, the latter of which is the topic of her habilitation project.
Image: © Grit Siwonia