Meet Toby Matthiesen, our new senior Lecturer in Global Religious Studies!

Toby will be joining us this September from Stanford University and Ca’ Foscari University in Venice where he is currently a Marie Curie Global Fellow, leading a project on Sunni-Shii Relations in the Middle East. He has previously held fellowships at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and the LSE.

Dr Matthiesen’s work focuses on the history and politics of Global Islam and the wider Middle East. He has published widely on confessional relations in Islam and the politics of the Middle East, with a focus on the Gulf Region. His research often involves multi-archival work and fieldwork, and the use of primary sources, including in Arabic. His recent book The Caliph and the Imam: The Making of Sunnism and Shiism was just published by Oxford University Press in 2023. Among his other books are: Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn’t (Stanford University Press, 2013), and The Other Saudis: Shiism, Dissent and Sectarianism (Cambridge University Press, 2015).