Homayra Ziad is a scholar-activist, educator and writer, and Director of the Program in Islamic Studies at Johns Hopkins University. After receiving a doctorate in Islamic Studies from Yale, she was Assistant Professor of Religion at Trinity College in Hartford. She then spearheaded education on Islam and engagement with Muslim communities at an interfaith educational non-profit in Baltimore (the Institute of Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies), where she helped teachers, activists and emerging religious leaders explore the intersections of religion and social justice.
Homayra believes deeply in the pedagogy of community-engaged learning and serves on the project team of Art, Religion and Cities, a Morgan State initiative that explores the display of religious art in museums to engage critical questions of race, justice, and community, and connects students to internship opportunities at cultural institutions.
Homayra has fifteen years of experience in interreligious education and programming and was founding co-chair of the American Academy of Religion’s Interreligious and Interfaith Studies Group. She is co-editor of Words to Live By: Sacred Sources for Interreligious Engagement (Orbis Press, 2018). She has written for many academic and popular venues, and consulted and created programs for film and media.
