Alice Bombardier

Alice Bombardier is Professeure agrégée at the Department of Geography and Regional Planning of Sorbonne Université, and a member of the Centre d’histoire du XIXe siècle (UR 3550, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne). She holds two doctorates, in sociology (EHESS) and in Arab-Persian civilisation (University of Geneva, 2012, on twentieth-century Iranian painting, under the supervision of Farhad Khosrokhavar and Silvia Naef), and is a Persian specialist and a French agrégée in geography. She also teaches the history of Islamic art and the geography of the Middle East and Eurasia at Inalco, and lectures at Sorbonne Université Abu Dhabi. Her research focuses on Iranian artistic modernity, the historiography of the representations of the Prophet Muhammad in the visual arts (19th-21st centuries) and the non-Western history of cultural modernity. She has notably published Les pionniers de la Nouvelle peinture en Iran (Peter Lang, 2017) and contributed to the collective volume Muhammad. Histoire d’un prophète (ed. Amir-Moezzi et al., with the Institut français d’islamologie).

Resources related toHistory

publication

The Recognition of a Hummingbird. Essays on Interreligious Dialogue and Missionary Work (2007-2025)

  • Rémi Caucanas

Published in May 2026 by PISAI (Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies, Rome), this collection brings together the essays of Rémi Caucanas on interreligious dialogue and missionary wor...

videos

From Lavigerie to PISAI: The Institutional History of the Missionaries of Africa’s Engagement with Islam

Delivered on 21 May 2026 at the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies (PISAI) in Rome, this lecture opens the series of conferences marking the institute's centenary (1926-2026). Fr. ...

publication

Maurice Borrmans and the Crisis of Christian-Muslim Dialogue. Islamic studies in Question?

  • Florence Javel

In 2025-2026, we mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council and of the declaration Nostra aetate (28 October 1965). One century earlier, in October 1925, Maurice Borrmans was born ...

videos

Muhammad in Modern Art, by Alice Bombardier

  • Alice Bombardier

Lecture given by Alice Bombardier (Professeure agrégée at Sorbonne Université) as part of the Théologies en dialogue Chair of the Faculty of Theology at UCLy, in Lyon, on 25 March 2026. Working ag...

publication

Islam and Muslims. Doctrines, Schools of Thought, and Current Trends

  • Michel Younès

Publication date: April 16, 2026. Islam, as a historical, religious, and civilizational reality, is difficult to define. It can be perceived as a form of political governance, an expression of fait...

publication

Canon and Censorship in Islamic Intellectual History

  • Amir Dziri

Published in De Gruyter’s series “Islam: Thought, Culture, and Society” (vol. 16, 2026), this collective volume is edited by Mohammad Gharaibeh and Bacem Dziri (Humboldt University of Berlin)...

videos

Maurice Borrmans (1925-2017), an Islamologist Defending Christian-Muslim Dialogue

  • Florence Javel

On 19 February 2026, in the Maurice Borrmans Library of the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies (PISAI) in Rome, Florence Javel, who holds a PhD in theology from the Catholic Univer...

videos

Landscape and architecture as occasions of contemplation and of interreligious dialogue in the travel narratives of the Sufi ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī

Paper presented at the fifth international congress of the University Platform for Research on Islam (Pluriel), held in Cordoba from 10 to 14 February 2026 on the theme "Ethics and Aesthetics in Is...