It’s a pleasure to introduce our guest blog editor for January: Necmettin Kizilkaya, Associate Professor of Islamic Law and Economics at the Faculty of Divinity, Istanbul University. He is director of the Center for Islamic Economics and Finance at Istanbul University. He earned his B.A in Islamic studies from Marmara University and an M.A in Islamic Law from the same university. He received his PhD in Islamic Law from Selcuk University, Institute of Social Sciences in 2011. He has also been a visiting fellow at Princeton University, Columbia University, and Cambridge University. His research interests relate to Islamic studies, especially Islamic law and economics. He focuses on the history of Islamic law, Islamic corporate law, and modernity and Islamic law. He also works on Islamic economics, migration issues, halal food and some other contemporary issues from the legal perspective.
His current research project Ottoman Legal Reforms in the Shadow of Modernity: 19th Century Corporate Law Regulations examines what kind of references the reformers of the Ottoman Empire had found in Islamic law. He specifically focuses on the new corporations and the legal entity in his research. He studies the new types of companies and the discussions of Ottoman bureaucrats and lawyers in the establishment of these companies through archival documents. Kizilkaya has published several books. His research in the field of Islamic law and economics has appeared in many leading academic journals. He is a scientific advisor for numerous academic journals, and serves on the editorial boards of many academic journals and editor in chief of the Turkish Journal of Islamic Economics (TUJISE).
For more on Professor Kizilkaya’s projects, visit his personal website or his academia page.