Jane Dammen McAuliffe


Jane Dammen McAuliffe is a prominent American educator, internationally known scholar of Islam and the inaugural Director of National and International Outreach at the Library of Congress. She is a President Emeritus of Bryn Mawr College and former Dean of Georgetown College at Georgetown University. As a specialist in the Qur'an and its interpretation, McAuliffe has produced the six-volume Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān and continues to lead the editorial team for the online edition of the work. She held previous appointments at Emory University as professor and associate dean and at the University of Toronto as Chair of the Department for the Study of Religion and Professor of Islamic Studies in the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations. She received her BA in Philosophy and Classics from Trinity Washington University and her MA in religious studies and PhD in Islamic studies from the University of Toronto.

Career

In 2015, McAuliffe was appointed the inaugural Director of National and International Outreach, a newly created division of the Library of Congress. Prior to that, she served as the Director of The John W. Kluge Center, the residential research center for scholars at the Library of Congress. From 2008 to 2013, McAuliffe was President of Bryn Mawr College and, from 1999 to 2008, she was Dean of Georgetown College at Georgetown University. At Georgetown, she was also a tenured Professor in the Department of History and the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies. McAuliffe held previous appointments at Emory University as professor and associate dean and at the University of Toronto as Chair of the Department for the Study of Religion and Professor of Islamic Studies in the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations. She received her BA in Philosophy and Classics from Trinity College, Washington, D.C. and her MA in religious studies and PhD in Islamic studies from the University of Toronto.

Contributions

McAuliffe contributes at both national and international levels to Muslim-Christian dialogue, has served on the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with Muslims and participated frequently in Building Bridges, a meeting of Muslim and Christian scholars established by the Archbishop of Canterbury and now hosted by Georgetown University. She is the past president of the American Academy of Religion.

Honors and awards

McAuliffe has been awarded fellowships by the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is an elected member of the American Philosophical Society, the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is also the recipient of several honorary degrees: Trinity Washington University, University of Toronto, and University of Notre Dame.

Positions

Publications

Books:
Peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and encyclopedia entries: