Director of studies at the EPHE (École Pratique des Hautes Etudes), PSL, chair of “Intellectual History of Contemporary Sunnism”, Dominique Avon has a degree in history and a diploma in Arabic. He was a lecturer at the University of Montpellier III, then Professor at the University of Le Mans. He taught in Egypt (1992-1994) and Lebanon (2004-2005). He has been a visiting professor in the United States (2014), Belgium (winter 2015-2016) and Italy (April-May 2020). He has established ongoing cooperations with scholars in Morocco, Tunisia, Switzerland, Germany, Russia and Canada.
He is a member of the laboratory GSRL-Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités (UMR 8582). Since 2020, he has been the director of the IISMM (Institute for the Study of Islam and Societies of the Muslim World), after having coordinated the HEMED Community (“Euro-Mediterranean History”), co-directed the IPRA (“Institute of Religious Pluralism and Atheism”) and chaired the AFHRC (“French Association of Contemporary Religious History”). He is a member of the LabEx haStec (“History and Anthropology of Knowledge, Techniques and Beliefs”), and is in charge of the DCIE collection “Dynamiques citoyennes en Europe” (Peter Lang editions).
Between 1996 and 2022, he wrote, edited or co-edited some twenty books, as well as eighty articles on contemporary religious history, mainly on Islam and Christianity. He has specialised in the study of ideas and doctrines, institutions of religious knowledge formation, and networks of intellectuals.
publication
Islam and Scientific Examination: A Renewed Quest
“How can we establish an objective, rigorous, and detached study of Islam in the face of the excesses generated by its politicization? It is to answer this burning question that the French In...
videos
Azharis, Representations of Christianity, and the Vagaries of Islamic-Christian Dialogue (1930s-2020s)
Dominique Avon, Director of Studies at the École pratique des hautes études, traces the evolution of the discourse of the ulama of al-Azhar on Christianity since the 1930s. Confronted with the colo...
videos
Sunni authorities at the turn of the 20th-21st century
Conference « Religious Authority in Islam », organised by the Centre for the Study of Cultures and Religions and the Research Unit of the Catholic University of Lyon (UCLy), on 18 and 19 November 2...
article
From Transnational Islamic Movements to Individual Religiosity: the Crisis of Religious Authority in Western European Muslim Communities
Islam has evolved in form over recent decades in Western European countries, where its lack of institutionalization and official representation allow different ideological trends, movements, and re...
publication
Islam and Scientific Examination: A Renewed Quest
“How can we establish an objective, rigorous, and detached study of Islam in the face of the excesses generated by its politicization? It is to answer this burning question that the French In...
publication
Islamochristiana Journal 49 (2024): “Maurice Borrmans and Mohamed Talbi: From Friendship to Rupture”
The title of this issue, “Maurice Borrmans and Mohamed Talbi: From Friendship to Rupture,” was suggested to us by a collection of articles that highlight different aspects of the relati...
videos
Online Symposium: Islamic Origins & Christian Theological Engagement with Islam
Panelists David Marshall, University of Bern (Moderator), Guest Editor of Islamochristiana Martin Accad, Arab Baptist Theological Seminary Daniel Brown, ISRME Diego Sarrio Cucarella, PISAI Sa...
videos
Azharis, Representations of Christianity, and the Vagaries of Islamic-Christian Dialogue (1930s-2020s)
Dominique Avon, Director of Studies at the École pratique des hautes études, traces the evolution of the discourse of the ulama of al-Azhar on Christianity since the 1930s. Confronted with the colo...
publication
MIDÉO No. 37: Recitation in the early centuries of Islam
The history of reciting the Quran has been rarely studied. This volume comprises most of the papers presented at the Third IDEO Conference held in Cairo in October 2020 on reciting in the early Isl...
publication
Luther and Mohammed. Western European Protestantism and Islam (16th-18th centuries)
Publisher’s presentation Autumn 1611: while visiting France, a young Dutch Protestant student refines his knowledge of Arabic with a Muslim of Castilian origin he met in the Paris region. Tho...
article
Original Sin and the Qur’an
The present article addresses the common view that the Qur’an has no doctrine of original sin. It begins by defining original sin with attention to the Bible and Christian tradition. Thereafter the...