The Divinity School is pleased to announce that Raissa von Doetinchem de Rande will be joining the faculty as an Assistant Professor of Religious Ethics. Her appointment will be effective July 1, 2024.

Professor de Rande comes to us from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, where she is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies with an appointment in the program in Jewish, Islamic and Middle East Studies (JIMES). She received her PhD from Princeton University (Department of Religion) in 2021; in addition, she holds a BA from the University of Oxford (2012) and an MAR from Yale Divinity School (2014).  

Professor de Rande’s research interests lie at the intersection of the study of Islam and religious ethics. The author of numerous articles and book reviews, her first monograph, The Politics of Islamic Ethics: Hierarchy and Human Nature in the Philosophical Tradition, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press in the New Cambridge Studies in Religion and Critical Thought series. The book focuses on the Qurʾanic concept of a divinely created human nature and its reception in early Islamic philosophy. 

Prof. de Rande will begin offering courses in Spring of 2025: “Islamic Ethics I: Foundations” will set the Islamic tradition in conversation with issues ranging from individual flourishing and the organization of society to conceptions of law and prophecy. “Islamic Supersessionism(s)” will explore Islamic engagements with the question of the relation of Islam to previous revelations.