Ismaili Imamat and the Making of an Ethical World 

Faith and Development in the Time of Aga Khan IV

Georgetown University, April 10, 2027

Call for Papers

This conference seeks papers on the thought, guidance, and institutional legacy of His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan IV (1936–2025). As the forty-ninth hereditary Imam of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims, Aga Khan IV shaped the religious, ethical, and institutional life of his followers. His leadership also extended into philosophical and ethical discourse, architecture and the built environment, and major initiatives in education, health, cultural preservation, and social development. Yet sustained scholarly engagement with these interconnected dimensions of his Imamat remains limited and dispersed.

This conference brings together scholars and graduate students whose work examines how Aga Khan IV’s Imamat took form across intimate, spatial, institutional, and global registers. We ask how his ethical vision is made present through everyday devotional life, institutional practice, and the built environment. We approach his legacy through scholarly analysis of the social worlds his work helped shape: how his vision has been lived, built, operationalized, interpreted, and remembered across different communities, institutions, and publics.

We invite papers that engage one or more of the following themes. Papers may consider the work of Aga Khan IV in time (synchronically) or through time (diachronically) as a particular manifestation of Shi’i Muslim ethics:

• History, Imamat, and Muslim Ethics: How might we understand the ethical and philosophical vision articulated across Aga Khan IV’s speeches, writings, interviews, and institutional discourse? How might we historicize this vision across the changing contexts of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries? How have his ideas shaped conversations on pluralism, citizenship, educational, health, development, gender, and cultural heritage? How might these materials be read to illuminate broader questions concerning faith, ethics, governance, and Muslim life?

• Devotion and Intimacy: How do Nizari Ismaili Muslims relate to the Imam, specifically Aga Khan IV? How do prayer, accounts of barakah and protection, devotional poetry, sacred objects, photographs, memorabilia, and domestic or communal spaces mediate relations between followers and the Imam? How do these devotional forms differ across regional contexts? Theological approaches are especially welcome in this section.

• Culture, Arts, and Built Environment: How do cultural forms and practices—including architecture, visual and performing arts, and public spaces such as Ismaili Centers, jamatkhanas, museums, parks, and delegation buildings—materialize Aga Khan IV’s religious, ethical, and aesthetic vision? In what ways do aesthetics shape belonging and moral formation? How are spirituality, environment, beauty, and public culture brought into relation in different regional and political settings?

• Development Institutions and Governance: How have the development institutions and initiatives associated with Aga Khan IV translated ethical vision into social, cultural, and political practice? How have people experienced these development projects? How might scholars critically assess the intersections of religious ethics, development practice, and global policy frameworks?

We welcome submissions from scholars and graduate students in anthropology, religious studies, history, architecture, development studies, political theory, sociology, and related fields.

A select group of undergraduate students will also be invited to present.

The conference is designed to support the development of publishable scholarly essays and to build a conversation around Aga Khan IV’s Imamat. Participants will be asked to circulate draft papers in advance of the conference. Papers will receive feedback from convenors. Select papers will be considered for a planned edited volume.

Submission Guidelines

Please submit the following:

• Name, affiliation, and position
• Paper title
• An abstract of 500 words that clearly identifies the paper’s central argument, methods, and contribution to the conference’s themes
• A brief biography of 150 words
• A statement that the paper is not under consideration for publication elsewhere

Deadline for abstract submission: August 15, 2026
Notification of acceptance: August 31, 2026
Draft papers: December 13, 2026
Draft papers may range from 2,000–9,000 words. The wide word count range is intended to accommodate papers at different stages of development.
First round of feedback: February 4, 2027
Conference: April 10, 2027 at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
Revised papers due for inclusion in edited volume: July 2027

Language: English
Submit to: Dr. Khoja-Moolji at sk2285@georgetown.edu
Subject line: Imamat Conference

The conference will cover airfare and two nights of hotel accommodations for participants traveling from North America and Europe. Scholars from other regions are warmly encouraged to apply and will be invited to participate virtually.

Convenors

Dr. Shenila Khoja-Moolji
Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani Endowed Chair of Muslim Societies
School of Foreign Service
Georgetown University

Sponsors

Organized by Georgetown University’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, with co-sponsorship from the Global Human Development Program; African Studies Program; the Global Cities Initiative; Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies; and the World Faiths Development Dialogue.

For inquiries, please contact Dr. Khoja-Moolji at sk2285@georgetown.edu.