DOHA: Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) has announced awards for the eight cycle of National Priorities Research Programme.
Georgetown University in Qatar’s (GU-Q) faculty member Ayman Shabana has been awarded a three-year grant to support his research on how medical technology is changing conceptions of paternity and maternity and what implications of these changes are for Islamic law and practice.
The project, ‘Structure of the Nuclear Family in the Wake of Genetic and Reproductive Technologies,’ aims to shed light on how new genetic and reproductive technologies pose challenges to the established structure of Islamic regulations concerning the nuclear family, which covers the marital connection and lineage regulations.
It will look at how technologies raise questions about traditional definitions of paternity and maternity and the extent to which both concepts should remain tied to marriage.
The project is another addition to the Islamic Bioethics Project which started in 2009 with a three-year QNRF-funded project by GU-Q in cooperation with Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University main campus in Washington, DC, to develop an information resource for Islamic Medical and Scientific Ethics (IMSE).
The IMSE project aimed to identify, collect, catalogue and index multi-lingual and multi-format resources and facilitate access to them by creating comprehensive bibliographic records within an integrated information retrieval system.
Following the success of this first project, in 2012 another three-year project to develop an encyclopedia of Islamic bioethics was proposed and granted funding from QNRF.
“GU-Q’s research programmes and initiatives address issues that are of critical importance to Qatar and dynamic region,” said Dr John Crist, Director of Research, GU-Q. “Our researchers conduct original studies which in the long term create tangible value for Qatar and abroad.”
Prof. Shabana said, “The research component of the new project is important for contributing to deeper understanding of Islamic family law in the modern period and tracing methodological strategies that govern change and continuity within the extended Islamic normative tradition. The bibliographic component utilises and expands valuable resources developed over the past few years through two QNRF-funded projects.”
Prior to joining GU-Q, Prof Shabana taught at institutions, including University of California-Los Angeles, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and Florida International University. He received Research Excellence Award at 2012 Qatar Foundation Annual Research Forum.
The Peninsula
