Ibn 'Arabi Society

Gregory Vandamme is a PhD candidate (FNRS-FRESH) working on classical Sufism, with a particular interest in the works of Ibn 'Arabi and his school. His research pays attention on transmission and transformation of doctrines from Early Sufism to Akbarian thought. He is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Louvain, Belgium

Dr Samer Akkach is Associate Professor of Architecture and Founding Director of the Centre for Asian and Middle Eastern Architecture (CAMEA) at the University of Adelaide, Australia.

He was born and educated in Damascus before moving to Australia to complete his PhD at Sydney University. As an intellectual historian, Samer has devoted over twenty years to the study of Ibn 'Arabi's mystical thought and intellectual legacy, and especially to their later revival by Abd al-Ghana al-Nabulusi.

His book Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam: an Architectural Reading of Mystical Ideas (SUNY 2005), traces the influence of Ibn 'Arabi's thought on the spatial sensibility of premodern Muslim architects. His further titles Abd al-Ghan al-Nabulusi: Islam and the Enlightenment (Oneworld 2007) and Letters of a Sufi Scholar: The Correspondence of Abd al-Ghana al-Nabulusi (Brill 2010) examine the intellectual contributions of this influential and prolific Sufi master who considered Ibn 'Arabi to be his spiritual master and source of inspiration.

Paolo Urizzi is the director of Perennia Verba, Italy. The interest in Perennial Wisdom has led him to deepen the metaphysical doctrines of Vedanta and Sufism, and his research has focused in particular on the notion of the "Seal of Saints".

At Haverford College (BA), then the University of Pennsylvania (MA), then the University of South Carolina (PhD), Eric Winkel undertook eclectic studies, mostly religion at first, focusing on spiritual matters, then later including political science, and numerous languages to enable study of religious and spiritual texts (Sanskrit, Greek, Coptic, Tamil, Arabic, others, besides French and German). His book "Mysteries of Purity, Ibn al-'Arabî's asrar al-taharah" (Notre Dame, 1995) was Chapter 68 of the Futuhat al-Makkiyya. While Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies in Malaysia, he explored how the concepts of the "new sciences" opened obscure and difficult passages of the Futuhat. Having studied Ibn Arabi's Futuhat al-Makkiyya for over twenty-five years, Eric Winkel is now in the midst of an eleven-year project to produce the first complete translation of this work.

Jane Clark is a Senior Research Fellow of the Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society and has worked particularly on the Society's Archiving Project as well as looking after the library.

She has been studying Ibn Arabi for more than forty years, and is engaged in teaching courses and lecturing on his thought both in the UK (including Oxford University and Temenos Academy) and abroad (including Egypt, Australia and the USA), and in research and translation of the Akbarian heritage. She has a particular interest in the correlation of Ibn Arabi's thought with contemporary issues. She organises the MIAS Young Writers Award.

Jane Clark was a co-founder of The Journal of Consciousness Studies and is currently editor of the Beshara Magazine. She has presented many courses as part of the program of the University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education.

Jane Carroll is a Senior Research Fellow of the Ibn Arabi Society and is Secretary of the Society in the US. She first studied the works of Ibn Arabi at the Beshara School in Scotland in the 1970s while concurrently studying at the Architectural Association in London with a specific interest in traditional geometry and Islamic architecture. She currently has a design practice in Ojai, California.

Pablo Beneito is currently Professor at the Department of Translation and Interpreting in the Faculty of Letters, University of Murcia, Spain. He has been studying the works of Ibn Arabi since he chose to do his doctorate in Arabic philology at the Complutense University of Madrid, after which he spent nine years teaching at the University of Seville in the Department of Arab and Islamic Studies. He has also been a visiting professor at the Sorbonne in Paris (Ecole Pratique des Hauts Etudes), in Kyoto University (ASAFAS) and in Toledo (Escuela de Traductores). As a specialist in Sufi thought, he has given courses throughout the world, and helped organise more than 14 international conferences. He heads MIAS Latina, an independent organisation affiliated to the Ibn Arabi Society, for speakers of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. He has edited and translated (into Spanish) Ibn Arabi's Mashahid al-asrar and Kashf al-ma'na. He is currently working on several of Ibn Arabi's shorter treatises, including Kitab al-Abadilah. Together with Stephen Hirtenstein he translated The Seven Days of the Heart - Ibn ʿArabi's Awrad al-usbu (Wird), and togther with Cecilia Twinch, Contemplation of the Holy Mysteries - Mashahid al-asrar al-qudsiyya.

Stephen Hirtenstein has been editor of the Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society since its inception in 1982, and is a co-founder of Anqa Publishing. He read History at King's College, Cambridge, and then studied at the Beshara School of Intensive Esoteric Education in Gloucestershire and Scotland. After a teaching career, he began writing and giving talks on Ibn 'Arabi's thought at conferences across the world. In addition to lecturing and writing, he organises and leads tours in the footsteps of Ibn 'Arabi. He currently works as a Senior Editor for the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, and is a Short courses tutor in the Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford. His publications include The Unlimited Mercifier – The spiritual life and thought of Ibn 'Arabi (1999), The Seven Days of the Heart Prayers for the nights and days of the week – Ibn 'Arabi's Awrad al-usbu (2000), Divine Sayings – 101 Hadith Qudsi – The Mishkat al-Anwar of Ibn 'Arabi (2004), and most recently The Alchemy of Human Happiness – Chapter 167 of Ibn 'Arabi's Meccan Illuminations – Fi ma'rifat kimiya' al-sa'ada (2017)

Pablo Beneito is currently Professor of the Translation and Interpretation Department in the Faculty of Letters at the University of Murcia. He has published editions and translations of several works of Ibn 'Arabi including Mashahid al-Asrar - Las contemplaciones de los misterios (with S. Hakim), which was translated into English as Contemplation of the Holy Mysteries together with Cecilia Twinch. He edited and translated into Spanish the Kashf al-ma'na - El secreto de los nombres de Dios, which has also appeared in French. In collaboration with Stephen Hirtenstein he edited and translated Ibn 'Arabi's Awrad al-usbu (Wird) - The Seven Days of the Heart. He is the editor of El Azufre Rojo (Red Sulfur: Journal of Studies on Ibn 'Arabi, which first appeared in 2014). He is a founder member and President of Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society-Latina (MIAS- Latina), established in 2011

Eric Winkel is working full-time on a translation of the entire al-Futuhat al-Makkiyah (The Openings Revealed in Makkah) based on the 2011 critical edition of Dr. Abd al-Aziz al-Mansoub, published in the Yemen. While at the Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies, in Malaysia, he combined his interest in mathematics and classical Islamic thought to explore the 'new sciences', finding 'unlocking keys' for some of the most obscure concepts in Ibn 'Arabi's work. In 2019 the Pir Press published Volume 1 of the translation (Books 1 and 2). Chapter One of the Futuhat translation can be downloaded in PDF form from the Futuhat Project website http://thefutuhat.com/