Zeyneb Sayilgan, Ph.D., is an affiliated faculty member. Her areas of expertise include Islamic theology and spirituality, Christian-Muslim Relations, and the role of religion in Muslim immigrant communities’ discourse.
Dr. Sayilgan’s research centers around Islamic theology and spirituality, Christian-Muslim relations, and the intersection of religion and migration. She also serves as the Muslim Scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies (ICJS) in Baltimore, MD. Her personal experience of growing up in Germany as a child of Kurdish Muslim immigrants from Turkey informs her academic work and engagement in interreligious learning. She also taught at The Catholic University of America and The Washington Theological Consortium.
From 2010-2014, Sayilgan was appointed as a residential chaplain at Georgetown University where she advised students from all and no faith backgrounds. She has a Ph.D. in Theological and Religious Studies from Georgetown University, a Master’s degree from Hartford Seminary in Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations, and a B.A/M.A. in Islamic Studies and Public Law from the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. She co-edited The Companion to Said Nursi Studies (2018) with the Very Rev. Ian S. Markham, and co-edited Faithful Neighbors: Christian-Muslim Vision & Practice (2016), with the Rev. Robert Heaney, Ph.D., D.Phil. Her current work is Islam and Immigration: Theological Insights from the Qur’an, a book articulating a religious discourse on immigration based on Islam’s Holy Scripture.