Radboud University

N.Sonneveld

Dr Nadia Sonneveld has an academic background in anthropology, Arabic and Law. She works at the Radbound University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Generally, the common factor in all her research activities is the focus on shari’a as a lived and contested reality that must be studied against the black letter of state-codified Islamic Law. She has conducted extensive research in Egypt and Morocco on the introduction and implementation of shari’a-based family law reform. Previously she was a guest scholar at the School of Oriental Studies (SOAS) in London, and Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. She authored Khul’ Divore in Egypt: Public Debates, Judicial Practices, and Everyday Life in 2012 and has co-authored, with Monika Lindbekk, Women Judges in the Muslim World: A Comparative Study of Discourse and Practice in 2017; and, with Doris Gray, Women, Social Change in North Africa: What Counts as Revolutionary? in 2018.

Relevant Publications:

  • “Women Judges in Morocco: Defying Gilligan’s Different Voice.” In Sonneveld, N and M. Lindbekk (eds) Women Judges in the Muslim World: A Comparative Approach of Discourse and Practice (Leiden, Brill, 2017) 123 – 152
  • “Rethinking the Difference between Formal and Informal Marriages in Egypt.” In Voorhoeve, M. (eds) Family Law in Islam: Divorce, Marriage and Women in the Muslim World (London, I.B. Tauris, 2012) 77 – 107
  • Khul’ Divorce in Egypt: Public Debates, Judicial Practices and Everyday Life (Cairo and New York, American University in Cairo Press & Oxford University Press, 2012)