History

The Islamic Bioethics Project at Georgetown University in Qatar started in 2009 with a grant proposal submitted to Qatar National Research Fund to develop an information resource for Islamic Medical and Scientific Ethics (IMSE). The three-year project aimed to identify, collect, catalogue, and index relevant multi-lingual and multi-format resources and facilitate access to them by creating comprehensive bibliographic records within an integrated information retrieval system. Throughout these three years, the Islamic Bioethics Project was featured and represented at major local, regional, and international conferences in the humanities and social sciences, particularly in the fields of bioethics, Islamic studies, and information studies. The project’s activities and initiatives culminated in the successful organization of an international conference in June 2012. In October 2012, the project received the prestigious award of the Best Arts, Behavioral & Social Sciences, Humanities, and Islamic Studies Research Program of the Year at Qatar Foundation’s Annual Research Forum.

In 2012 another grant proposal was submitted to Qatar National Research Fund to develop the world’s first Encyclopedia of Islamic Bioethics. This second three-year proposal aimed to achieve three main goals: expansion and further development of the IMSE collection and database; establishment of the infrastructure for and development of the Encyclopedia of Islamic Bioethics; and raising awareness about the field of Islamic bioethics through various scholarly outreach initiatives, programs and events. The Encyclopedia is scheduled to be published by Oxford University Press and will also be integrated within the Oxford Islamic Studies Online.

In 2015 a third grant proposal was submitted to Qatar National Research Fund to investigate the impact of modern genetic and reproductive technologies on the structure of the nuclear family. In addition to further expanding the bibliographic infrastructure of the project through the IMSE collection and database, the project aims to utilize these and similar resources in exploring the impact of new genetic and reproductive technologies on the Islamic conceptualization of the nuclear family in terms of both the (re)formulation of relevant rules as well as the administration of these rules.