Dr Sophia Vasalou BA (Hons) (London), MA (London), PhD (Cantab)

Dr Sophia Vasalou

Department of Theology and Religion
Associate Professor of Philosophical Theology

Contact details

Email
s.vasalou@bham.ac.uk
Address
Room 251
School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion
ERI Building
University 麻豆精选
Edgbaston
Birmingham, B15 2TT

My work spans a number of areas and a number of themes. As a researcher in Islamic theology, my main interests lie in ethics, particularly forms of Islamic ethics with a strong rationalist edge. My early work on the Mu’tazilites was followed by more recent work on the ethical thought of the Hanbalite theologian Ibn Taymiyya. My current research focuses on the development of the virtues in the Islamic intellectual tradition, taking al-Ghazālī as a linchpin figure. One of my aims in engaging with this tradition is to place it in conversation with the larger history of philosophical and theological approaches to the virtues. As part of this ambition, I recently led a collective project that explored the intellectual history of the virtue of magnanimity or greatness of soul.

Outside Islamic ethics, I have been interested in the complex phenomenon of wonder and the many conceptual threads that meet on its grounds -- intellectual, spiritual, ethical, aesthetic. This is the prism through which I have approached the philosophy of Schopenhauer and engaged with its aesthetic and ethical dimensions.

Qualifications

  • BA (Hons) in Arabic, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
  • MA in Islamic Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
  • PhD in Islamic theology, Faculty of Divinity/St John’s College, University of Cambridge

Biography

After completing my PhD in Cambridge in 2006, I was a junior research fellow at Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge for four years (2005-08, 2011) and a post-doctoral teaching fellow on the interdisciplinary programme of the European College of Liberal Arts in Berlin, now Bard College Berlin (2009-10). This was followed by research fellowships at Orient Institut Beirut (2012), Oxford Brookes University (2013-14), and New York University Abu Dhabi as part of the Library of Arabic Literature project (2015).

Postgraduate supervision

Find out more - our PhD Theology and Religion  page has information about doctoral research at the University 麻豆精选.

Research

My current research interests include:

  • Islamic ethics
  • Philosophical and theological approaches to the virtues
  • Philosophy of religion, esp. the relationship between morality and religion, the problem of evil
  • Schopenhauer; pessimism, the problem of suffering
  • Wonder; the emotions

Other activities

In my spare time I’m also a translator of modern Arabic fiction.

Personal website: 

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Vasalou, S 2025, . Oxford University Press.

Vasalou, S 2021, . 1 edn, Routledge.

Vasalou, S 2019, . Oxford University Press.

Article

Vasalou, S 2022, '', Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 104, no. 3, pp. 468鈥�508.

Vasalou, S 2020, '', Journal of Aesthetic Education, vol. 54, no. 3, pp. 47-69.

Vasalou, S 2017, '', Journal of Religious Ethics, vol. 45, no. 4, pp. 688鈥�731.

Vasalou, S 2017, '', Dialogue: Canadian Philosophy Review, vol. 56, no. 2, pp. 291-316.

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Vasalou, S 2021, . in M Shah (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Ethics. Oxford University Press.

Vasalou, S 2019, . in The Measure of Greatness: Philosophers on Magnanimity. Oxford University Press.

Vasalou, S 2019, . in M Alfano, M Lynch & A Tanesini (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Humility. Routledge.

Vasalou, S 2019, . in S Guenther & Y El Jamouhi (eds), Islamic Ethics as Educational Discourse: Thought and Impact of the Classical Muslim Thinker Miskawayh. Mohr Siebeck: T眉bingen.

Chapter

Vasalou, S 2020, in B Orfali, A Khalil & M Rustom (eds), Mysticism and Ethics in Islam. American University of Beirut.

Vasalou, S 2019, . in A Schinkel (ed.), Wonder, Education, and Human Flourishing. VU University Press, Amsterdam.

Anthology

Vasalou, S 2019, . Oxford University Press.

Other report

Vasalou, S 2019, . New York University Press.