Niels Valdemar Vinding

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Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and Law & Religion, at Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen 

2022 - 
As of 1 October 2022, I am a permanently associate professor at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Copenhagen, where I will research and teach Islamic studies, but also cultivate the research field 'law and religion'. I continue as head of the project 'Producing Sharia in Context' until early 2025.

Associate Professor and research leader, Department for Cross-cultural and Regional Studies

2021 - 2022

With the Sapere Aude grant from the Independent Research Fund Denmark, the purpose of the project 'Producing Sharia in Context' is to investigate the sharia practice of Danish Muslims, as a very variable entity. In many sectors of society, a significant part of sharia is interpreted and concretized in the meeting with ordinary social and professional functions such as school teachers and social workers - or prison officers who, for example, negotiate with Muslim inmates about what reasonable accommodations to be taken on Fridays. At the same time, we see that Muslims' stance on current issues such as climate and sustainability, gender and equality, law and democracy are shifting their understanding of the meaning of the divine messages.

Post.doc fellow, Department for Cross-cultural and Regional Studies

2017 - 2020
https://mosques.ku.dk/

As framed in the project, mosques are not simply Muslim places of worship, but a complex contemporary socio-religious institution of the post-migratory Muslims in Denmark that are highly conflicted and contested in present day Denmark. They are products of infighting, power struggles and pragmatic negotiations internally amongst users, subgroups and leadership and externally with local, national and international agents, stakeholders and structures. We propose to empirically explore the complex power forms and relations constituent to the mosque through initial contextualizing archival and case research followed by qualitative interviews with key informants and participant observation in the mosques in order to produce a multifaceted power diagnostics of the forces at play in and around Danish mosques. Thus, the purpose of this research project is to investigate the forms, rationales and relations of power associated with the perceptions, authority, positions, dynamics and counter-power of mosques in Denmark.

Assistant Professor, Department for Cross-cultural and Regional Studies

2014 - 2017
The project ‘Imams of the West’ proposes a qualitative sociological interview study of
between 50 and 60 imams in Europe, Australia and North America (‘the West’) in order to
document how the Islamic religious institution of the imam changes in the challenging
encounter with a global, multicultural and post-migration ‘Western’ world.

Member of the Board of Danmission

2016 - 2020
Member of the Board of Danmission appointed by the board

PhD Fellow, Centre for European Islamic Thought, University of Copenhagen.

2009 - 2013

This PhD project is intended to investigate the relationship and interactions between on the one side organised Muslims and Muslim institutions, and on the other side, the relationship to religion of the State, specifically in Britain, Germany and Denmark, perhaps Scandinavia. The intention is to examine the current situation of Muslim organisations and institutions in these countries, and the way they address their legal needs and norms to the State. This is to be closely understood in the light of the State's very traditional regulation of, accommodation of and relationship to religion generally and Islam specifically.

Master of Arts in Islamic Studies, Department of Cross-cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen

2006 - 2009

Won the University of Copenhagen Gold Medal for Academic Excellence with the thesis on 'the English State's regulation of the relationship between the State and Anglicanism and Islam, respectively'