Kimberly T. Wortmann, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department for the Study of Religions and a Kulynych Family Faculty Fellow at Wake Forest University. She earned her Ph.D. in the Study of Religion from Harvard University in 2018, an M.T.S. in African Religions and Islamic Studies from Harvard Divinity School in 2011, and a B.A. in Religious Studies with a minor in Political Science from Macalester College in 2007.
Trained in Islamic and African Religious Studies, Wortmann’s scholarship examines transregional networks of knowledge exchange, transmission, and production between East Africa and the Arabian Gulf. She has lived and studied in Uganda, Egypt, Yemen, Tanzania (including the islands of Zanzibar), and Oman.
Her research has been supported by the Humanities Institute, the William C. Archie Fund for Faculty Excellence, the Fulbright Program, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the Harvard Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship, among others. Her 2024 book, Society of the Righteous: Ibadhi Muslim Identity and Transnationalism in Tanzania (Indiana University Press, 2024), examines the moral, social, and political dimensions of Ibadi Muslim networks between East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. The book was named a finalist for the African Studies Association’s (ASA) Bethwell A. Ogot Book Prize for the best book in Eastern African Studies. Wortmann has also published several articles on Ibadi Islam in Tanzania and Oman. Her current project, Banking on Belief: Islamic Finance, Religion, and Governance in Uganda, explores the intersections of religion, economy, and statecraft in contemporary East Africa.
Wortmann joined the Wake Forest faculty in 2018 and is an active member of the African Studies and Middle East and South Asia Studies minors. She currently serves as co-chair of the Contemporary Islam Unit at the American Academy of Religion and has previously served on the steering committee of the Islam in Africa Group (IASG) at the ASA.
Ph.D., Harvard University (Study of Religion)
M.T.S., Harvard Divinity School (Islamic Studies and African Religions)
B.A., Macalester College (Religious Studies)
Publications:
Wortmann, Kimberly T. Society of the Righteous : Ibadhi Muslim Identity and Transnationalism in Tanzania. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2024.
Wortmann, Kimberly T. “Minority Affairs: Ibadi and Ismaili Muslims in East Africa”
(forthcoming with Religion Compass)
–“Revisiting Community and Tradition from the Margins.” Religious Studies Review 51, no. 2
(June 2025): 361–372. Symposium: Ethnographies of Muslim Community Formation:
Education, State, and Traditions in Global Perspective.
— “Ibadi Muslim Schools in Post-Revolutionary Zanzibar.” Africa: Journal of the International
African Institute, 92 (2022): 249–64.
— “Reading Ibāḍī Women’s Legacies through Stone Town’s Built Environment.” Islamic Africa,
2021, 1–28.
— “Daʻwa at the Sultan’s Mosque: An Example of Ibādī Women’s Activism in Muscat.” In Local
and Global Ibadi Identities, Eds. Yohei Kondo and Angeliki Ziaka. Studies on Ibadism and
Oman 13. 2019.
Book Reviews
Wortmann, Kimberly T. “Islam and Muslim Life in West Africa: Practices, Trajectories and
Influences Edited by Abdoulaye Sounaye and André Chappatte.” Journal of Islamic studies
(Oxford, England) 2024: 443–448.
– Review of Morality at the Margins: Youth, Language, and Islam in Kenya by Sarah Hillewaert.
African Studies Review. Volume 63, Issue 2. June 2020.
- Introduction to Islamic Traditions
- Sacred Arts of African Muslims
- Approaches to the Study of Religions
- Religion and Diplomacy