Adam Matvya

Adam is a doctoral student at the University of Notre Dame studying Islamic thought and literature with a minor in Peace Studies.  He received his BA in English Literature from San Francisco State University and his MA in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago, where he wrote his thesis on historical trends in Islamic legal reasoning.  At the doctoral level, he is interested in reformist political theologies in late Mughal and early colonial India and interreligious encounters between Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus.  He is currently working on two research projects combining social history, religious studies, and anthropology.  The first explores the intellectual history of a jihad movement led by a messianic Muslim group against the Sikh state in the nineteenth century.  The second explores Indian Muslim responses to Christian missionaries.  He has advanced graduate certificates in Islamic Studies and Classical Arabic from American University in Cairo and is a former Urdu and Arabic FLAS Fellow (2019; 2020) and CLS Punjabi recipient (2017; 2018; 2021).  Additionally, Adam is passionate about international education and language learning and works part-time as an English Second Language instructor for students in East Asia.