Teresa Bernheimer is a historian of the Middle East in the period ca 600 to 1200 CE. She is particularly interested in the formation of Islam in the context of Late Antiquity and beyond.
From 2009-2017 she taught early Islamic History at SOAS, University of London, in the very department which had sparked her interest in the “Origins of Islam” during her BA. She received her MPhil and DPhil from Oxford. Her research has focused on the emergence of social and religious elites and their influence on the formation of Islam and Muslim societies; her book The Alids: The First Family of Islam, 750-1200 (Edinburgh University Press 2013) is a study of the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, who came to be revered by both Sunnis and Shi‘ites.
Besides social history, she is interested in material evidence for the study of early Islam (particularly early Islamic coinage) and in approaches to and ways of teaching the history of early Islam. Together with Tamima Bayhom-Daou she edited four volumes on the early Islamic history (Early Islamic History, Critical Concepts in Islamic Studies, 4 vols. London 2013), and published a fifth revised edition of the widely used textbook Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (with the late Andrew Rippin, London 2019).
Teresa Bernheimer is currently at LMU Munich, where she is PI on the project Beyond Conflict and Coexistence. The Entangled History of Jewish-Arab Relations funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). She is working on a project on Colour Terms in Judaism and Islam 600-1200.
