Areas of interest:
Biography
Luke Wilkinson is a doctoral student in the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, working on Muslim-Christian relations in the seventeenth century Mediterranean. He is Director of the Cambridge Festival of the Islamic Arts 'fostering friendship through beauty' (19-29 November 2026), which seeks to facilitate inter-religious and cross-cultural community cohesion in Cambridge and the United Kingdom through immersive experiences in the Islamic arts. He is a regular contributor to the journal, Critical Muslim, on the themes of modern Islamic philosophy, South Asian intellectual history, and Sufism. He is a member of the Cambridge Interfaith Programme Research Forum and Associate Editor for Project Noon. He also is Ian Karten Scholar at the Woolf Institute. He has been developing a grassroots, community-driven project in Malta, where he grew up, to improve Muslim-Christian dialogue.
Research
My doctoral work focuses on Muslim-Christian encounters in Malta, in the southern Mediterranean, in the long seventeenth century. Drawing upon the fields of microhistory, interfaith relations, and intellectual history, my research centres around several interlocutors in Malta to explore the often paradoxical relationship between inward and outward elements of religious belief and practice in the context of inter-religious encounter.
Publications
‘Time and history in the thought of Muhammad Iqbal’, Time and Periodization in History, ed. Marcus Colla, Allegra Fryxell, Anna Gutgarts and Oded Y. Steinberg, (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, forthcoming).
‘Balancing the Desires’, Critical Muslim 51, (London, England : C.Hurst & Co Ltd., October 2024).
‘Heba Abu Nada’, Critical Muslim 53, (London, England : C. Hurst & Co Ltd., December 2024).
‘The Sea in the Quran’, Critical Muslim 53, (London, England : C. Hurst & Co Ltd., December 2024).
Other Professional Activities
- Director, Cambridge Festival of the Islamic Arts 'fostering friendship through beauty' (19-29 November 2026) - he leads a festival team with an advisory board and institutional partners across Cambridge to host a major arts festival on the fiftieth anniversary of the World of Islam Festival (1976) to improve inter-religious and cross-cultural community cohesion in Cambridge and the rest of the United Kingdom.
- Senior Faith and Leadership Programme (2024-2025 cohort) - media training, leadership skills, and conflict resolution training alongside other Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faith leaders across the United Kingdom.
- Associate Editor, Project Noon - engages academics in public-facing conversations relating to Hindu-Muslim relations.
- Founder and lead of grassroots, community-driven project in Malta - public meetings to engage members in Muslim-Christian dialogue to challenge polarisation and Islamophobia in Malta.
