Berkley Center

Maria Massi Dakake is an associate professor of religious studies at George Mason University (GMU) in Fairfax, Virginia. She is the director of the undergraduate interdisciplinary Islamic studies program at GMU, and is a founding member and former co-director of the Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies. Her research interests and publications lie in the fields of Islamic intellectual history, with a particular interest in Quranic studies, Shiite and Sufi mystical traditions, and women’s religious experiences. She is co-editor with Daniel Madigan and George Archer of the Routledge Companion to the Qur’an (2021); associate editor and co-author of The Study Qur’an (2015); and author of The Charismatic Community: Shi`ite Identity in Early Islam (2008). She is currently completing a monograph, Toward an Islamic Theory of Religion (forthcoming 2023). She holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern studies from Princeton University.