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CALL FOR PAPERS: NINTH SOAS CONFERENCE ON THE QUR'AN‘The Qur’an: Text, Society And Culture’ ConferenceThursday 11 – Saturday 13 February 2016SOAS, University of LondonConvenors: Prof. M.A.S. Abdel Haleem and Dr Helen BlatherwickDeadline for abstracts: 18 September 2015Proposals are invited for the Ninth SOAS Conference on the Qur’an, to be held from Thursday 11 to Saturday 13 February 2016. The conference series seeks to provide a forum for investigating the basic question: how is the Qur’anic text read and interpreted? Our objective is to encompass a global vision of current research trends, and to stimulate discussion, debate and research on all aspects of the Qur’anic text and its interpretation and translation.While the conference will remain committed to the textual study of the Qur’an and the religious, intellectual and artistic activity that developed around it and drew on it, contributions on all topics relevant to Qur’anic studies are welcomed and attention will also be given to literary, cultural, politico-sociological and anthropological studies relating to the Qur’an. The final conference programme will take account of the range of proposals actually accepted.Selected papers will be published as articles in the Journal of Qur’anic Studies, subject to standard outside refereeing. Speakers are expected to give priority to JQS when publishing these articles.Submission of Abstracts:The deadline for abstracts is Friday 18 September 2015. Abstracts of up to 400 words and a short bio (of up to 200 words) should be submitted in Word format by email attachment to quran.conference@soas.ac.uk.The primary conference language is English, but papers may be presented in English or Arabic. All applicants will be notified of the status of their proposals on 8 October 2015.Presented papers should be 25 minutes long, and will be followed by 5 minutes for questions per paper.Further Information:It is Centre of Islamic Studies policy to reimburse featured speakers for their standard travel expenses, hotel accommodation and board. We do, however, encourage speakers to try to obtain some funding from their home universities or other sources wherever possible.If you would like further information on the conference series, please visit the conference webpages at http://www.soas.ac.uk/quran-2016/. This will be updated with the provisional conference programme from end October 2015, on an ongoing basis.For general enquiries, please contact the conference administrator at quran.conference@soas.ac.uk.For academic enquiries only, please contact Helen Blatherwick at hb20@soas.ac.uk.No registration is required for this conference and all are welcome to attend.Venue: Brunei Gallery, SOAS, University of London, Russell Square, Thornhaugh Street, London WC1H 0XG