Christian Lange (PhD Harvard, 2006) is Professor and Chair of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Utrecht and a fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Art and Sciences. His research focuses on premodern Islamic intellectual and cultural history, particularly in the areas of Islamic eschatology, Islamic law and legal theory, Islamic mysticism, and the Muslim sensorium. Since joining Utrecht University in 2011, he has been the Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant project "The here and the hereafter in Islamic traditions" (HHIT, 2011-2015), as well as of the ERC Consolidator Grant project "The senses of Islam" (SENSIS, 2017-2023). As of 2023, he is the Principal Investigator of the NWO Vici Grant project "Rosewater, nightingale and gunpowder: A sensory history of the Islamic world, 1500-1900" (RONIGU, 2023-28).
Lange's Justice, punishment and the medieval Muslim imagination (Cambridge 2008, Arab. tr. 2016) is a study of state violence and conceptions of justice under the Seljuq dynasty (11th-13th c.) in political, eschatological, and legal terms. Lange is also the author of Paradise and hell in Islamic traditions (Cambridge 2016), winner of the 2016 British-Kuwait Friendship Society Bookprize and the joint winner of the 2016 World Award for Book of the Year in Iran. His most recent monograph is Mohammed. Perspectieven op de Profeet (Amsterdam 2017). Currently, he is working on a multi-author handbook entitled Islamic Sensory History, to appear in three volumes (Leiden-Boston, 2024-).
He welcomes inquiries about Research Master and PhD supervision, particularly in regard to projects straddling Islamic Studies and the Study of Religion.