John Bowen, a sociocultural anthropologist and the Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been named a 2016 Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Corp. of New York.
Bowen is one of 33 scholars nationwide selected in this highly competitive fellowship program. Fellows receive up to $200,000 to support one to two years of scholarly research and writing aimed at addressing some of the world’s most urgent challenges to U.S. democracy and international order. Bowen will use his fellowship for a research project titled “Islam Adapting in the West.”
Bowen studies problems of pluralism, law and religion, and, in particular, contemporary efforts to rethink Islamic norms and law in Asia, North America and Europe. His work examines how Muslims (judges and scholars, public figures, ordinary people) work across plural sources of norms and values, including diverse interpretations of the Islamic tradition, law codes and decisions, and local social norms.