Jun.-Prof.in Feriel Bouhafa

Feriel Bouhafa is a scholar of Arabic/Islamic philosophy with a focus on moral/legal philosophy in medieval thought. After receiving her Ph.D. from Georgetown University in 2016, she took fellowships at Harvard Centre of Middle Eastern Studies, the Orient Institute in Beirut, and the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. Later, she joined the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge where she served as a lecturer (2017-2020) and was awarded the Pilkington Prize for Teaching Excellence of the University of Cambridge in 2020. She then held a position as senior research associate (2020-2021) at Faculty of Divinity in Cambridge. Since October 2021,  She has been appointed as the junior professor for Islamic and Arabic studies (tenure track) at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg.

Manuscript and edited issues

• Ibn Rushd: A Moral Philosophy in Islam. (Leiden: Brill, in print).
• Guest editor of the special issue “The Conceptual Ground of Good and Evil in Islamic Discourse: A Fecund Domain For Ethical Reflections,” Journal of Islamic Ethics, vol. 8, Brill. (2024).
• Guest editor of the special issue “Towards  New Perspectives in Ethics in Islam: Casuistry, Contingency, and Ambiguity,” The Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies,  Vol. 21 (2021)“
• Natural Justice under the Scope of Rhetoric: The Written and the Unwritten Laws in Ibn Rushd’s Political and Legal Philosophy,” 2016, (Dissertation, Georgetown University, published online)

Articles and Book chapters

• “Ethical Norms between Law, Virtue, and Logic: the Written and Unwritten Laws in Avicenna’s Philosophy” in Persuading and Transmitting in Classical Arabic Philosophy: Studies in Honor of Maroun Aouad, eds. Jawdat Jabour and Frédérique Woerther (Leiden: Brill, 2026).
• “A Heuristic Approach to Ethics in Islam: the possible meanings of Good and Evil ”, Journal of Islamic Ethics, vol. 8 (2024).
• “Towards  New Perspectives in Ethics in Islam”, Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, vol. 21 (2021).
•  “The Dialectics of Ethics: Moral Ontology and Epistemology in Arabic Philosophy,” Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, vol. 21 (2021)
• “After Adam: Ibn ‘Aqīl on language origin, change, and expansion,” in Philosophy and Language in the Islamic World, ed. Nadja Germann (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020). Peer-reviewed.
• “Ethics and fiqh in Farabi’s philosophy,” in Philosophy and Islamic jurisprudence in the Islamic World, ed. Peter Adamson (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019). Peer-reviewed.
• “Rhetoric in the court: Averroes on testimonial witnessing and oaths,” in L'histoire des commentaires à la Rhétorique d'Aristote, ed. Frédérique Woerther (Leiden: Brill, 2018). Peer-reviewed.  
• “Averroes’ corrective philosophy of law,” in Interpreting Averroes, eds. Peter Adamson and Matteo Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). Peer-reviewed.