Tom Woerner-Powell's interdisciplinary research examines religio-political dimensions of Islamic thought and Muslim experience in colonial and post-colonial contexts, exploring confluences and boundaries between ostensibly religious and political practices, ideas, and frames of reference. It engages with on-going representations of Islam and Muslims through the category of ‘religion’ in the modern period, with particular focus upon the political effects and hermeneutic contexts of discourses on mysticism, religiously sanctioned violence, and principled pacifism.

Tom Woerner-Powell is Principal Investigator in an international AHRC-funded research project exploring varieties of pacifism and nonviolence in modern Islam.