Professor Caroline Tee

Teaching Interests

Undergraduate modules:

TH4068 Global Islam
TH5069 Contemporary Islam
TH6069 Religion, Violence and Nationalism
TH6051 Dissertation

Postgraduate modules:

TH7059 Contemporary Islam
TH7080 Studying Theology and Religion
TH7025 Research Dissertation

Research Interests

My research is interested in the ways in which Islam is lived in the contemporary world. It focuses on the intersection between religion, democratic politics and other major institutions of modernity such as modern science, secular education, and civic engagement.

I have carried out extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Turkey, and have published primarily on the subject of the Alevi minority and the socio-religious movement led by the US-based imam Fethullah Gülen. I have an emerging research interest in the anthropology and cultural history of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, one of the world's most iconic sacred buildings.

I am series editor (with Ashraf Hoque) for the Edinburgh Studies in Anthropology of Islam book series at Edinburgh University Press, and lead editor of the Oxford Handbook of Religion in Turkey (Oxford University Press, 2024). From 2024-2027, I am Principal Investigator for 'Muslims, the Secular, and Existential Risk' which is funded by Templeton Religion Trust to the value of £1.2m.

Books

2016 The Gülen Movement in Turkey: The Politics of Islam and Modernity (London: I.B. Tauris).

Edited Work

2023 (forthcoming) Tee, Caroline, Fabio Vicini and Philip Dorroll (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Turkey (NY and Oxford: Oxford University Press).

2019. Tee, Caroline and Hilary Marlow (eds.) “Qur’anic Hermeneutics and Modern Science” Special Issue of Journal of Qur’anic Studies (Edinburgh University Press).

Peer-reviewed journal articles

2019. Tee, Caroline. “Creating Charisma Online: The Role of Digital Presence in the Formation of Religious Identity” in Journal of Contemporary Religion 34.1, pp.75-96.

2018. Tee, Caroline. “The Gülen Movement in Exile: The Dialogue Society in London and the Politics of Public Engagement”, in Politics, Religion and Ideology, vol.19 issue 1.

2014. Tee, Caroline and Shankland, David. “Said Nursi’s Notion of Sacred Science: Its Function and Application in Hizmet High School Education” in Sociology of Islam 1:3-4, pp. 209-232.

2013. Tee, Caroline. “The Sufi Mystical Idiom in Alevi Aşık Poetry: Flexibility, Adaptation and Meaning” in European Journal of Turkish Studies (Online publication date: 29-01-13).

2010. Tee, Caroline. “Holy Lineages, Migration and Reformulation of Alevi Tradition: A Study of the Derviş Cemal Ocak from Erzincan” in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, vol 37(3), pp. 335-392.

Book chapters

2021. Tee, Caroline. “The Gülen Movement: Between Turkey and International Exile”. Islamic Sects and Movements (Brill Handbooks on Contemporary Religion series, eds. Carole Cusack and Benjamin E. Zeller) Leiden: Brill. 

2018. Tee, Caroline. “The Gülen Movement and the AK Party: The Rise and Fall of a Turkish Islamist Alliance” in Turkey’s July 15th Coup: What Happened and Why, (eds. M. Hakan Yavuz and Bayram Balcı) Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. 

2014. Tee, Caroline. “On The Path of Pir Sultan? Engagement with Authority in the Modern Alevi Movement” in Contemporary Turkey at a Glance. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Local and Translocal Dynamics (eds. F. Keyman, A. Kaya, O. Onursal, K. Kamp) Wiesbaden: Springer, pp. 25-39.

2013. Tee, Caroline. “Seyfili Dede: The Life History of an Alevi Dede-Aşık” in Archaeology, Anthropology and Heritage in the Balkans and Anatolia: The Life and Times of F.W. Hasluck (ed. David Shankland) Istanbul: Isis Press, pp.155-169.

Other Articles/Blogs

2016. Tee, Caroline. “The Bible and Qur’an in the Light of Modern Science”. Guest blog post for Science and Religion: Exploring the Spectrum. April 12, 2016.

2012. Tee, Caroline. ‘Derviş Cemal Ocak’ı: Batı Anadolu’da kutsal bir tarihi yeniden hatırlamak’ (The Derviş Cemal Ocak: Reclaiming a Sacred History in Western Anatolia), in Alevilerin Sesi 160. Sayı Özel Dosya: ‘Alevi Coğrafyası’ (The Voice of Alevis, Vol. 160, Special Issue: ‘Alevi Geography’).

Translations

2010. Turkish to English translation of Amed Gokçen’s, “Notes from the Field: Yezidism: A New Voice and an Evolving Culture in Every Setting” in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, vol 37(3), pp. 405-427.

Reviews

2015. Tee, Caroline. İren Özgür, Islamic Schools in Modern Turkey: Faith, Politics, and Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), reviewed in International Journal of Turkish Studies, vol. 21.

2013. Tee, Caroline. Hakan M. Yavuz, Towards an Islamic Enlightenment: The Gülen Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), reviewed in American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS), Winter 2013.

• PhD University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom1 Sep 2008 - 1 May 2012
• MA University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom1 Sep 2007 - 1 Sep 2008
• BA (Hons) Durham University, Durham, United Kingdom1 Sep 1994 - 1 Jul 1997