Tom Woerner-Powell's interdisciplinary research examines religio-political dimensions of Islamic thought and Muslim experience in colonial and post-colonial contexts, exploring confluences and boundaries between ostensibly religious and political practices, ideas, and frames of reference. It engages with on-going representations of Islam and Muslims through the category of ‘religion’ in the modern period, with particular focus upon the political effects and hermeneutic contexts of discourses on mysticism, religiously sanctioned violence, and principled pacifism. His current writing explores the varieties of pacifism and nonviolence in contemporary Islam, into which he has led an international AHRC-funded research project.

Educated at the Universities of Oxford, Durham, and Damascus, he speaks English, German, Arabic, French, and Irish.

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