Walter Edward Young

I am a senior researcher and lecturer in Islamic argumentation & debate theory, Islamic law & legal theory, and Islamicate Intellectual History more broadly; currently I hold the position of Senior Researcher (Islamic Argumentation Theory) in “RevLog Redux”, the 2024 European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant project “Logic in Reverse Redux. Illegitimate Argumentative Moves in the Arabic, Byzantine, Hebrew and Latin Medieval Traditions”. A core member of a larger movement to research, revive, and practice the Islamic sciences of critical thinking—especially dialectical debate methods (jadal / munāẓara / ādāb al-baḥth)—I will convey to any host institution a broad, international network of like-minded scholars, with ongoing and planned collaborations for decades of critical research and teaching in the argumentative sciences of Islam. I am the author of The Dialectical Forge (Springer, 2017) and some two dozen published and forthcoming articles and book chapters, and to date I have enjoyed well over a decade of international post-doctoral research and teaching appointments, conference invitations, and collaborations, all thanks to a number of funding bodies and benefactors.

Few would disagree our world is desperately in need of rational, ethical, “truth-seeking” models for argumentation and debate; and it has already proven valuable for modern theorists to mine the rich vein of argumentation and debate methods produced by over 1,000 years of refined Islamicate scholarship. My driving objective remains to bring these methods to light, to analyze them, to make them accessible, and—above all—to train a new cadre of critical thinkers in their practice.