Columbia University and Aga Khan University in London are launching a dual master’s degree program in Islamic studies and Muslim cultures this fall.
Students in the program will begin their studies at Columbia, finish at Aga Khan, and earn master’s degrees from both institutions. They will receive intensive foreign-language instruction in either Arabic or Farsi and design their own courses of study in areas like art and architecture in Muslim cultures, the Koran in Europe, and modern Muslim mobility.
The program will be administered by Columbia’s Middle East Institute and Aga Khan’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations. Its inaugural director is the political scientist and sociologist Kathryn Spellman Poots, an associate professor at Aga Khan and a visiting associate professor at Columbia.
“This partnership will foster the development of the theoretical and practical perspectives needed to understand how Muslim societies are responding to pressing global challenges,” says Ira Katznelson ‘66CC, Columbia’s interim provost and the Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History. “At this moment in history, such an endeavor is especially important.”
