Amira Bennison’s teaching and research focuses on the medieval Islamic West (Islamic Iberia and Morocco). She is particularly interested in Maghribi modes of legitimation and cultures of power, and the urban interventions of rulers over time. Her SCAS research project is to reassess the Marinid sultanate, which ruled an area roughly comparable to modern Morocco from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. In the past she has also worked on 18th–19th century Muslim religio-political discourse and engagement with modernity. Her book publications include The Almoravid and Almohad Empires (Edinburgh, 2016) and The Great Caliphs: The Golden Age of the ‘Abbasid Empire (London, 2009). Her latest volume, The Medieval Maghrib: Cities, Patronage and Power, is due to be published by Edinburgh University Press. She is currently the Director of the HRH Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre of Islamic Studies, a post-doctoral research centre at the University of Cambridge that supports projects working with Muslim communities and promoting better understanding of them in the UK and Europe. In addition to her academic work, Bennison has led cultural tours to many parts of Spain, North Africa and the Middle East, and she has contributed regularly to television programmes on Islamic history and BBC Radio 4’s ‘In Our Time’. She has also participated in two episodes of the BBC podcast, ‘You’re Dead to Me’.

This information is accurate as of the academic year 2026-27.