Gudrun Krämer


Gudrun Krämer is a German scholar of Islamic history and co-editor of the third edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam. She is professor of Islamic studies, Chair of the Institute of Islamic Studies at the Free University of Berlin and a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Her expertise is in topics related to modern Islamic history and in Islam, democracy, and modernity.

Life

Kramer was born in Marburg, Hesse in 1953. She earned her doctorate from the University of Hamburg in 1982, with her dissertation focusing on the History of the Jews in Egypt. She spent some time as a researcher for the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and a lecturer at the University of Bonn.

Work

Kramer is noted as an analyst of Islamism from both a theological and textual standpoint, examining both the theoretical and practical implications of political Islam. In 2010, she was the first Islamic studies scholar to earn the International Research Prize from the Gerda Henkel Foundation due to the influence of her historical and cultural research on Muslims and its potential to explain current events.

English