Author: Goran Larsson

Göran Larsson is a professor of religious studies at the Department of Literature, History of Ideas and Religion at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. While his research is primarily focused on Islam and Muslims in Europe, he has also written about Islamic theology, Qur’anic studies and issues related to religion and the media. Apart from his academic work, Larsson also has functioned as secretary to the Ministry of Education”s 2008-2009 inquiry into the training of Imams in Sweden. His most recent publication is Muslims and the New Medias: Contemporary and Historical Debates. He has also published Islam and Muslims in Sweden: Integration or Fragmentation? A Contextual Study (2007), in collaboration with professor Åke Sander and edited the volume, Islam in the Nordic and Baltic Countries (2009). Although Larsson earned his Ph D in religious studies from the University of Gothenburg, he has also held positions at Uppsala University and Södertörn University College, and has been a guest researcher at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Currently, he is also holding a part-time position at Oslo University as lecturer in Islamology and History of Religions. Link: http://www.lincs.gu.se/members/goran_larsson/ Thomas Hoffmann is a professor mso (i.e. with special responsibilities) of Qur’anic studies at the Department of the Section for Biblical Exegesis at University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Hoffmann holds a MA in comparative religion from the University of Copenhagen and received his Ph D in 2005. He has worked as an associate professor at Arabic- and Islamic Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark. He has been awarded The Danish Independent Research Council’s Young Researcher’s Award. Among his publications are the monograph The Poetic Qur’an: Studies on Qur’anic Poeticity (2007) and a Danish lexicon on Islam (2008).