2024-2025 Ahlul Bayt Fellow
Zeinab Vessal
Zeinab is a third-year PhD candidate in the Art and Religion Program at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) in Berkeley, California.
She has received several prestigious awards, including the school’s Presidential Scholarship (2022-27), Haas Scholarship (2023), the Apostolos-Cappadona Religion and the Arts Award from the American Academy of Religion (2023), and now the MMF Ahlul Bayt Fellowship for Graduate Studies (2024-25).
Her research focuses on the intersection of iconography, sacred texts, history, and theology within the material culture of Shia Muslim societies, with particular emphasis on the role of Muharram objects in shaping Shia identity. With a background in Islamic manuscripts and professional calligraphy, Zeinab has conducted Islamic calligraphy workshops at various institutions, including the University of Wisconsin and UC Berkeley.
As a member of the International Quranic Studies Association, she studies the societal Quran and the public understanding of Quranic inscriptions on Islamic objects and sacred spaces in the Middle East and Shia-inscribed iconography in early modern manuscripts.
She is the Vice President of the Shia Muslim Association at Northwestern University and has co-designed and facilitated numerous workshops and webinars on Islamic studies since 2019. She strives to bridge traditional scholarship with contemporary issues, offering insights into the role of art and material culture in shaping Shia religious and cultural identity. Zeinab views knowledge as a pathway to enlightenment, inspired by Ahlul Bayt’s role as the most influential teacher across all Muslim societies, enhancing Muslim identity and fostering social bonds within the community.
Zeinab can be reached at zvessal@ses.gtu.edu
2023-2024 Ahlul Bayt Fellow
Shantanu Mehra
Shantanu is currently a Ph.D candidate in Social Anthropology at York University in Toronto, Canada.
From Lucknow to Melbourne to Beirut to Toronto for his academic pursuits, Shantanu is now examining the formation of Twelver Shi’i Muslim identity in Canada by ethnographically studying the institutionalization of Shi’i Islam within the larger milieu of Islam in the Americas. He seeks to understand how Twelver Shias come together to form a community and express and engage with their status as a ‘minority within a minority’ in a secular multicultural society. Like many people, he draws his intellectual and spiritual motivation from the life story of Fatima Zahra (sa) and the story of Karbala and its universalizing message.
Shantanu believes that an honest pursuit of knowledge is, above all, about an orientation towards a striving for spiritual well-being. Furthermore, this pursuit must be supported by contributing towards improving the world. In other words, it is not about fulfilling only the spiritual self but more about the moral obligation to serve the broader society through education and active engagement.
Shantanu also likes traveling and exploring new cuisines! He is not active on social media but can be reached at smehra25@yorku.ca
2022-2023 Ahlul Bayt Fellow
Shereen Yousuf
Shereen is currently a Ph.D candidate in Rhetoric, Politics and Culture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Shereen’s research aligns heavily with her organizing efforts within the Twelver Shia community. She considers herself a race and decolonial scholar because those frameworks allow her to de-center Western epistemologies, which is foundational in rhetorical studies, and instead recenter the Islamic tradition and community experiences as sources of knowledge even if they do not operate in relation to Western epistemic thought. For her dissertation in particular, Shereen is working with the community-based organization Shia Racial Justice Coalition to develop an anti-racism curriculum that caters specifically to Twelver Shia Muslim communities in the U.S. Her dissertation will explore the process of incorporating Twelver Shia teachings and modes of sense-making that Twelver Shias have adopted around racism into the pedagogical design. What is particularly exciting about this dissertation project is the opportunity to incorporate the teachings of the Ahlul-Bayt (pbuh) in her research. Specifically, the Ahlul-Bayt play an integral role in how Twelver Shias make sense of contemporary social, political, and economic issues and nearly every Imam lived amidst rampant injustice, was persecuted for his promotion of “just” Islamic principles, and was martyred by the “State” or governing apparatus of his time. In addition to Prophetic tradition and Qur’anic revelation, these divinely-appointed leaders offer examples for Muslim ethics from places of alienation, incarceration, and fear of survival that resonate with contemporary calls for abolition and resistance of State violence. What Shereen hopes to do with her dissertation, and future research more broadly, is forward theoretical interventions within rhetorical studies, by expanding alternative modes of sense-making rooted in community and faith of the Shia tradition instead.
Shereen can be reached at syousuf@wisc.edu