Dr. Felicitas Opwis, Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University, received her doctorate from Yale University. Her scholarship investigates the articulation of the religious sciences of Islam in their historical, social, and political environment, focusing on Islamic law. In addition to tracing the intellectual history of the concept of public interest (maṣlaḥa) and the purposes of the sharīʿa (maqāṣid al-sharīʿa) in pre-modern and modern times, her research addresses authority construction within schools of law, legal change, and whether or not a “reformation” has occurred in Islamic law. She is currently finishing a monograph on the interaction between ethics and law. At Georgetown, she teaches the religious sciences of Islam, conceptions of justice, and transformations of religious authority in modernity.