SENSIS: The senses of Islam

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Welcome to the homepage of The senses of Islam: A cultural history of perception in the Muslim world.

Funded by a Consolidator grant from the European Research Council (Project number 724951) and hosted by the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Utrecht, this 5-year research project runs from 2017 to 2021. 

The aim of SENSIS is to write a cultural history of the senses in Islam, by examining how the senses have been conceptualised, and calibrated, in a variety of Muslim environments. This endeavor is premised on the assumption that sensory perception is not only a physical but also a cultural act: how people experience and understand sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch differs according to the historical, geographical, social and intellectual contexts in which perception occurs. How, then, are we to conceive of the Muslim sensorium, past and present?

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