Hilary's research focuses on Islam and society in the modern Middle East, with particular attention to changing structures of leadership, authority, knowledge, and education in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Egypt and Syria. Female Islamic Leadership and Authority In October 2009, she co-organized a conference at St Antony's College that brought together scholars studying female Islamic authority in countries around the world. Twenty papers from this conference appear in a volume co-edited with Masooda Bano,Women, Leadership and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority (Leiden: Brill, 2012). Her single-authored introduction to Women, Leadership, and Mosques, "Islamic Authority and the Study of Female Religious Leaders," lays out the major themes in the study of Islamic authority and explains how a study of felame Islamic leadership focused on religious authority can contribute significantly to scholarship on Islam and Muslim women. As an outgrowth of this project, she runs a mailing list for scholars interested in all aspects of female leadership in Islam. Dissertation on Dar al-'Ulum and Social, Religious and Linguistic Change The dissertation uses the Dar al-'Ulum teacher-training school and its graduates as a prism through which to view sociocultural change in Egypt, 1900-1950. Founded in 1872 as part of Khedive Isma'il’s efforts to expand the Egyptian government’s civil-school system, the school trained top students from religious schools such as al-Azhar to be schoolteachers with strong Arabic skills. It became a faculty of Cairo University in 1946. The work as a whole presents a new vision of how modernisation and colonialisation affected colonised societies. It demonstrates that a major engine driving sociocultural change in interwar Egypt was the agency exercised by individuals who crossed boundaries and consciously mixed elements of local tradition and European-inspired modernity. Dar al-'Ulum is best seen as a hybrid institution that not only bridged but also mixed elements of civil and religious education. Throughout its seventy-four years as a higher school, its curriculum combined the Arabic and Islamic disciplines that formed the core of religious tradition with basic instruction in the non-religious subjects – such as mathematics, science, geography, and history – taught in the European-influenced civil-school system. The school represents a new type of religious education, as it taught religious subjects using the ocularcentric, concept-driven pedagogies of civil schools. It was an early contributor to the functionalisation of Islam, or the use of religious knowledge further specific sociocultural, religious, or political goals. Dar al-'Ulum presented opportunities and challenges to its graduates. The mixed range of cultural capital it provided enabled graduates to cross and straddle sociocultural boundaries, such as the one drawn between the efendiyya and the 'ulama', which presented top students in religious schools with a chance at becoming an efendī professional. The school and its graduates have often been incorrectly described as overly conservative, in part due to their in-between status. While the graduates generally maintained a strong connection with Egypt’s Arabic and Islamic traditions, their commitment to adapting these traditions to meet the needs a rapidly modernising Egypt was equally strong. Graduates combining the authenticity gained from local Arabic and Islamic knowledge with the cachet of European-influenced practices to modernise Arabic or Islam include Ḥasan Tawfīq al-'Adl, Hifni Nasif, 'Ali al-Jarim, Tantawi Jawhari, Muhammad Madi Abu al-'Aza'im, Taki al-Din al-Nabhani, as well as Ḥasan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb of the Muslim Brotherhood. Education Oxford University, Doctoral candidate, Oriental Studies, 2006 - 2011 Dissertation: From Turban to Tarboush: Dar al-'Ulum and Social Change in Interwar Egypt Supervisor: Walter Armbrust Oxford University, M.St. with Distinction, Modern Middle Eastern Studies, 2006 Fulbright Fellow, Damascus Syria, 2004-2005 Princeton University, B.A. with Honours, Near Eastern Studies, 2004 Middlebury College Summer Language Immersion Program, Arabic Publications EDITED VOLUME JOURNAL ARTICLE CHAPTERS AND ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES REVIEWS Awards First Prize, 2007 BRISMES Graduate Article Competition in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies Clarendon Fund Bursary, scholarship and stipend to University of Oxford, 2005-2008 ORS Fellowship, scholarship (fee reduction) to University of Oxford, 2006-2008 British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) Research Student Award, funding to support fieldwork, 2008-2009 Colin Matthew Fund, Travel Award for Historical Research, University of Oxford, 2008-2009 Oriental Studies Faculty Research Grant, Near and Middle Eastern Studies, 2008-2009 Selected Conference Papers and Presentations --- “Being ‘Modern’ and Religious: Hybridity, Authenticity and Cairo’s Dar al-‘Ulum,” Middle Eastern Studies Association Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., December 2011 (on program)--- “Changing Ideas about Teacher Training: Importing Social Scientific Approaches into 1890s Egypt,” The Long 1890s in Egypt: Colonial Quiescence, Subterranean Resistance, University of Edinburgh, May 2011 --- “Preaching, Speaking, Leading: Preliminary Thoughts about Female Islamic Leadership in Britain” as an invited presenter at a seminar, Encouraging Muslim Women Into Higher Education Through Partnerships and Collaborative Pathways, Higher Education Academy Islamic Studies Network Project, February 2011 --- “Emotion versus Analysis: Contrasting Descriptions of the “Battle” to Wear the Tarboush at Dar al-‘Ulum”, Oriental Institute Research In Progress Seminar, University of Oxford, December 2010 --- “Hybridized Education and the Emergence of Modern Islamic Authority: Dar al-‘Ulum, Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb", Middle Eastern Studies Association Annual Meeting, San Diego, November 2010 ---“Female Islamic Leadership in Context” as an invited guest presenter at a seminar, Women as Scholars and Leaders: Theological Debates in Islam, University of Birmingham (UK), June 2010 --- “Education Reform and the Emergence of Modern Islamic Authority: Dar al-'Ulum, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hizb al-Tahrir,” Religious History Seminar, University of Oxford, May 2010 --- "History as a Hobby in Interwar Egypt: Memoirs, Modernity and Muhammad 'Abd al-Jawad's Yearbook, Taqwim Dar al-'Ulum," Middle Eastern Studies Association Annual Meeting, Boston, November 2009 --- "A Modern Islamic Education? Dar al-'Ulum and Changing Authority of Knowledge in Early Twentieth Century Egypt", Oriental Institute Research in Progress Seminar, June 2009 --- "Changing Pedagogies: Dar al-'Ulum and the Impact of Social Scientific Thought, Historical and Critical Perspectives on the Social Sciences in Egypt, 1882-1952, Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Cambridge, MA, April 2008 --- "Female Islamic Leadership in Damascus: A New Kind of Feminism?", Middle Eastern Studies Association Annual Meeting, Montreal, November 2007 --- "Female Leadership and Activism in Conservative Islamic Communities: An Islamic Form of Feminism?", Engaging Islam: Feminisms, Religiosities and Self-determinations, UMass Boston Fall Institute, Boston, MA, September 2007
MSt Extended Essay Tutor, Modern Middle Eastern Studies, Oxford, spring 2011 Tutorial Instructor, Williams-Exeter Programme at Oxford, spring 2011 Undergraduate Thesis Examiner, Oriental Institute, spring 2011 Undergraduate Thesis Tuition, New College, spring 2008 Tutorial Instruction, Oxford University, Politics of the Middle East (PPE 211), 2007-present
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