M. (Mònica) Colominas Aparicio, Prof

Mònica Colominas Aparicio obtained her BA Degree and MA Degree (cum laude) in Arabic Language and Culture at the University of Amsterdam. She holds a PhD from the same university (Department of Religious Studies), funded by NISIS (Netherlands Interuniversity School for Islamic Studies). She was representative of the NISIS Junior Research Council.

Her dissertation examined the religious polemics against the Christians and Jews of the Muslim minorities (Mudejars and Moriscos) who lived in the Christian areas of the Iberian Peninsula in the late Middle Ages and early modern period. In it, she discussed how these Muslims used polemics to build their identity as Muslims and maintain the cohesion of their communities within a context with a Christian majority. The dissertation was awarded the PhD Dissertation Award from the Amsterdam School of Historical Studies (UvA) in 2016.

During her PhD, Mònica has also been an external member of the international project CORPI (Conversion, Overlapping, Religiosity, Polemic and Interaction) of the CSIC (Centro Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) in Madrid (ERC Advanced Grant (2013-2019). Barcelona-born Mònica also holds a diploma in Classical Guitar (Conservatorium of Amsterdam).      

            Currently, Mònica is VENI laureate with a project that addresses the conditions of Jews and Christians in al-Andalus (Muslim Iberia, from 711 to 1492). She investigates their social realities and aims to clarify knowledge about the history of minorities in Islamic societies. In August 2020 she joined the Faculty of Religion, Culture and Society as Rosalind Franklin Fellow at the Department of Christianity and the History of Ideas. Her specialism: religious minorities (Muslims, Christians and Jews) in pre-modern Iberia, currently with a focus on al-Andalus. She teaches at the BA and MA programme and forthcoming at the Faculty's Erasmus Mundus MA programme Religious Diversity in a Globalised World (EU funded).

Since 2016 to present, Mònica has been affiliated to the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin (Department I, Structural Changes in Systems of Knowledge). First she worked as a postdoc and then as a research scholar and core member of the interinstitutional MPIWG-project "Convivencia: Iberian to Global Dynamics, 500-1750". Now she is MPIWG Visiting Research Scholar and focuses on the uses of natural philosophy by the Mudejars and Moriscos in polemics. Here it should also be mentioned that Mònica is member of the Interuniversity Spanish-funded project SIDE-Cultures (2022-2025) concerned with the semantics of inclusion and exclusion in the Castilian cities of the 14th-15th centuries.

            In 2020, Mònica joined the Executive Board of NISIS (Netherlands Interuniversity School for Islamic Studies), and in 2022 the Editorial Board of Brill's book series The Iberian Religious World. She is Review Editor of Brill's journal Medieval Encounters.

            Mònica's publications (see Publications) include a monograph in Brill (2018) on the corpus of Muslim polemical literature in the peninsular Christian territories that bears the title of The Religious Polemics of the Muslims of Late Medieval Iberia. Identity and Religious Authority in Mudejar Islam [The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World 64].