Dominique Avon
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.
Resources of this researcher
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videos
Inaugural Lecture for the Chair in Mediterranean Studies, Religions and Societies
- Dominique Avon
Lecture given by Professor Dominique Avon on October 13, 2025, at the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies (PISAI).
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Freedom of conscience, a contested yet resilient right
- Dominique Avon
Rome. In a conference given on November 28, 2024, at the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies, Professor Dominique Avon from the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris traced the ...
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Islam and Scientific Examination: A Renewed Quest
- Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi
- Dominique Avon
“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...
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Azharis, Representations of Christianity, and the Vagaries of Islamic-Christian Dialogue (1930s-2020s)
- Dominique Avon
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...
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Sunni authorities at the turn of the 20th-21st century
- Dominique Avon
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...
Resources related to
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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...
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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. ...
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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 ...
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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...
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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)...
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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...
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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...
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Aesthetics of living together: visualising an Islamic ethics of the other in al-Andalus
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...