Michael Kemper is interested in contemporary Russian politics and the history of Russia and Eurasia. His research focus is on Islam in Russia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus, as well as on the history of Oriental Studies in Europe.

Kemper is professor and chair of Eastern European Studies, one of the four chair groups of European Studies at UvA; between 2015 and 2018 he also served as head of the Department of History, European Studies and Religious Studies. He studied Slavic as well as Islamic and Oriental Studies at Bochum University, Germany. At Bochum University Kemper also directed, in close collaboration with Prof. Stefan Reichmuth, a Junior Research Group on "Islamic Networks of Education (18th-20th Centuries)", supported by the Volkswagen Foundation. Between 1998 and 2007, this group produced seven dissertations on Islamic movements of education in India, Syria, Bosnia, and Turkey/the Ottoman Empire. Before coming to UvA Kemper worked as assistant professor for Central EurasianHistory at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY.

Major publications:

1.     On "Islamo-Russian"

A.K. Bustanov and M. Kemper, "'Traditsionnyi islam Valiullly Iakupova", Vostok/Orients (Moscow), 3/2017.

Alfrid K. Bustanov  and Michael Kemper, Islam po-russki: analiz sovremennoi islamskoi literatury v Rossii. Uchebnoe posobie (Sankt Peterburg: Sankt-Peterburgskii gosudarstvennyi universitet; Prezidentskaia biblioteka, 2016), 134 pp.

Gulnaz Sibgatullina and Michael Kemper, “Islam and Eurasianism: Geidar Dzhemal and the Islamic Revolution in Russia”, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 28.2 (2017), special issue: Russia's Islam and Orthodoxy beyond the Institutions, ed. by Alfrid K. Bustanov and Michael Kemper, 219-236.

Alfrid K.Bustanov and Michael Kemper, “Editorial: Russia’s Islam and Orthodoxy beyond the Institutions: Languages of Conversion, Competition and Convergence”, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 28.2 (2017), special issue: Russia's Islam and Orthodoxy beyond the Institutions, 129-139.

Michael Kemper and Alfrid Bustanov, "Islam i russkii iazyk: sotsiolingvisticheskie aspekty stanovleniia obshcherossiiskogo islamskogo diskursa", Kazan Islamic Review 2015, no. 1, 211-221.

"Russkii iazyk islama: fenomenon perekliucheniia koda", in: Reformy obrazovaniia musul'man Evrazii ot Khusaina Faizkhanova do Ismaila Gasprinskogo: istoricheskii opyt i sovremennaia aktual'nost'. Materialy iubileinoi X Vserossiiskoi nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii s mezhdunarodnym uchastiem 'Faizkhanovskie Chteniia', Moskva, 12 dekabria 2014 g), part 1, ed. by Shamil R. Kashaf and others (Moscow: Median, 2015), 41-51.

Alfrid K. Bustanov, Michael Kemper, "The Russian Orthodox and Islamic Languages in the Russian Federation", Slavica Tergestina: European Slavic Studies Journal 15 (2013), 258-277.

A.K. Bustanov/ M. Kemper [eds.], Islamic Authority and the Russian Language: Studies on Texts from European Russia, the North Caucasus and Siberia (Amsterdam: Pegasus 2012), 400 pp.

2.     On Soviet Oriental Studies and Islam in the USSR:

"From 1917 to 1937: the Mufti, the Turkologist, and Stalin's Terror", Die Welt des Islams 57.2 (2017), 1-30.

Reassessing Orientalism: Interlocking Orientologies during the Cold War, edited by Michael Kemper and Artemy M. Kalinovsky (London: Routledge, 2015).

"Propaganda for the East, Scholarship for the West: Soviet Strategies at the 1960 International Congress of Orientalists in Moscow", Reassessing Orientalism, 170-210.

"Rukopisi, ob"edinaiushchie Vostok i Zapad: M.A. Usmanov i zadachi vostokovedeniia", in: Tiurko-musul'manskii mir: identichnost', nasledie i perspektivy izucheniia (k 80-letiiu professora M.A. Usmanova). Sbornik statei, ed. by D.M. Usmanova, D.A. Mustafina and M. Kemper (Kazan: Kazanskii universitet, 2015), 7-42.

The Heritage of Soviet Oriental Studies , ed. by Michael Kemper and Stephan Conermann ( London and New York : Routledge, 2011), 336 pp.

"Red Orientalism: Mikhail Pavlovich and Marxist Oriental Studies in Early Soviet Russia",  Die Welt des Islams  vol. 50: 3-4 (2010), 435-476.

Islamic Education in the Soviet Union and Its Successor States , ed. by Michael Kemper, Raoul Motika, Stefan Reichmuth, London and New York: Routledge, 2009, 367 pp.

"The Soviet Discourse on the Origin and Class Character of Islam, 1923-1933",  Die Welt des Islams  49:1 (2009), 1-48.

"Ljucian Klimovič, der ideologische Bluthund der sowjetischen Islamkunde und Zentralasienliteratur",  Schweizer Asienstudien , LXIII (2009), 93-133.

3.     On Tatar Islamic History:

“Imperial Russia as Dar al-Islam? Nineteenth-Century Debates on Ijtihad and Taqlid among the Volga Tatars,”  in special issue: Islamic Law and Society:  A Global Perspective, guest editor Sabrina Joseph, Encounters:  An International Journal for the Study of Culture and Society  6 (Fall 2015):  95-124.

Alfrid K. Bustanov and Michael Kemper, “Valiulla Iakupov’s Tatar Islamic Traditionalism”, Asiatische Studien – Études Asiatiques LXVII, 3/2013, 809-835.

"šihābaddīn al-Marğānī über Abū n-Nasr al-Qūrsāwī s Konflikt mit den Gelehrten Bucharas (Einleitung, arabischer Text und Übersetzung)", in: von Kügelgen, Muminov, Kemper (eds.), Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia, vol. 3, Berlin 2000, pp. 353-383.

Sufis und Gelehrte in Tatarien und Baschkirien. Der islamische Diskurs unter russischer Herrschaft , Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag 1998, 516 pp. [ Russian translation: Sufii i uchenye v Tatarstane i Bashkortostane, 1789-1889: Islamskii diskurs pod russkim gospodstvom,  transl. by Iskander Gilyazov, Kazan ': Idel'-Press, 2008, 655 pp.]

""Shihābaddīn al-Marğānī als Religionsgelehrter", in: Kemper, von Kügelgen, Yermakov (eds.), Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia [vol. I], Berlin 1996, pp. 129-166.

"Entre Boukhara et la Moyenne Volga: ´Abd an-Nasir al-Qursawi (1776-1812) en conflit avec les oulémas traditionalistes", in: Cahiers du Monde russe, vol. 37, (1-2), janvier-juin 1996, pp. 41-52.

4.     On the North Caucasus:

Shamil Shikhaliev and Michael Kemper, “Sayfallāh-Qāḍī Bashlarov: Sufi Networks between the North Caucasus and the Volga-Urals”, The Piety of Learning: Islamic Studies in Honor of Stefan Reichmuth, ed.by Michael Kemper and Ralf Elger (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 166-198.

Michael Kemper and Shamil Shikhaliev, "Islam and Political Violence in Post-Soviet Daghestan: Discursive Strategies of the Sufi Masters", Princeton Papers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, vol. XVII, special issue: Constellations of the Caucasus: Empires, Peoples, and Faiths ed. by Michael Reynolds (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2016), 117-154.

Michael Kemper and Shamil Shikhaliev, "Qadimism and Jadidism in Twentieth-Century Daghestan", Asiatische Studien – Études Asiatiques 69.3 (2015), 593-624.

Michael Kemper & Shamil Shikhaliev, "Zerrissener Islam in Daghestan: Sufis und 'Wahhabiten'", Schweizer Gesellschaft Mittlerer Osten und Islamische Kulturen Bulletin SGMOIK 39 (Herbst 2014), issue Kaukasus im 21. Jahrhundert, 10-13.

"Ijtihad into Philosophy: Islam as Cultural Heritage in Post-Stalinist Daghestan", Central Asian Survey 33:3 (2014), 390-404. 

Michael Kemper and  Shamil Shikhaliev, “Dagestanskoe reformatorstvo pervoi treti XX veka kak raznovidnost’ dzhadidizma”, in: Abu Suf”ian Akaev: Epokha, zhizn’, deiatel’nost’, edited by G. Orazaev (Makhachkala: Dag. knizhnoe izd., 2012), 52-58.

 "An Island of Classical Arabic in the Caucasus: Daghestan", in : Exploring the Caucasus in the 21st Century. Essays on Culture, History and Politics in a Dynamic Context , edited by Françoise Companjen, László Marácz and Lia Versteegh ( Amsterdam : AUP, 2010), 63-90.

 "How to Take the Muslim Peripheries Seriously in the Writing of Imperial History?", in:  Ab Imperio 4/2008, 472-482.

"Ghazi Muhammad's Treatise against Daghestani Customary Law", in: Moshe Gammer (ed.),  Islam and Sufism in Daghestan  ( Helsinki : Finnish Academy of Sciences and Letters, 2009), 85-100.

"The North Caucasian Khalidiyya and 'Muridism': Historiographical Problems",in: Journal for the History of Sufism vol. 5 (2006), 111-126.

"Daghestani Shaykhs and Scholars in Russian Exile: Networks of Sufism, Fatwas and Poetry", in: Daghestan and the World of Islam , edited by Moshe Gammer and David J. Wasserstein (Helsinki 2006), 95-107.

Herrschaft, Recht und Islam in Daghestan. Von den Khanaten und Gemeindebünden zum ğihād-Staat  (Caucasian Studies vol. 7), Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2005, 464 pp.

"'Adat against Shari'a:  Russian Approaches towards Daghestani 'Customary Law' in the 19th Century", Ab Imperio 3/2005, pp. 147-174.

"Arabischsprachige 'adat- Ethnographie aufrussische Bestellung?", in: Rechtspluralismus in der IslamischenWelt. Gewohnheitsrecht zwischen Staat und Gesellschaft , herausgegeben von Michael Kemper und Maurus Reinkowski, Berlin: De Gruyter 2005, 317-330.

Die Islamgelehrten Daghestans und ihre arabischen Werke. Nadīr ad-Durgilīs (st. 1935) Nuzhat al-adhhān fī tarāğim ´ulamā` Dāġistān , herausgegeben, übersetzt und kommentiert von Michael Kemper und Amri R. šixsaidov, Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag [ Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia,   vol. 4 ], 2004, 460 pp. [Russian edition: Nazir al-Durgeli, Uslada umov v biografiiakh dagestanskikh uchenykh (Nuzhkhat al-azkhan fi taradzhim 'ulama' Dagistan). Dagestanskie uchenye X-XX vv. i ikh sochineniia. Perevod s arabskogo, kommentarii, faksimil'noe izdanie, ukazateli i bibliografiia podgotovlennye A.R. Shikhsaidovym, M. Kemperom, A.K. Bustanovym, Moscow, 2012].

"Communal Agreements  (ittifaqat)  and  ´adat-  Books from Daghestani Villages and Confederacies (18th - 19th Centuries)", Der Islam 81 (2004), 115-151.

Michael Kemper, Amri Shikhsaidov and Natalya Tagirova, "The 'Shamil Collection' of the Princeton University Library", in:  The Princeton University Library Chronicle , vol. LXVI, no. 1 (Autumn 2002), 121-140.

"The Daghestani Legal Discourse on the Imamate", in:  Central Asian Survey  (2002), 21 (3), 161-174.

"Khalidiyya Networks in Daghestan and the Question of Jihad ", in:  Die Welt des Islams  vol. 42, 1 (2002), pp. 41-71.

5.     Comparative Perspectives:

Michael Kemper and Ralf Elger, “Introduction: The Piety of Learning”, The Piety of Learning: Islamic Studies in Honor of Stefan Reichmuth, ed.by Michael Kemper and Ralf Elger (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 1-11.

"The Changing Images of Jihad Leaders: Shamil and Abd al-Qadir in Daghestani and Algerian Historical Writing",  Nova Religio: Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions  , vol. 11, 2 (2007), 28-58.

Rechtspluralismus in der Islamischen Welt. Gewohnheitsrecht zwischen Staat und Gesellschaft,  ed. Michael Kemper and Maurus Reinkowski , Berlin : De Gruyter (Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen Orients, vol. 16), 2005, 378 pp.

Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the Early 20th Centuries  [vol. 1], edited by Michael Kemper, Anke von Kügelgen, Dmitriy Yermakov , Berlin : Klaus Schwarz Verlag 1996, 482 pp.; Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the Early 20th Centuries, vol. 2: Inter-Regional and Inter-Ethnic Relations,  edited by Anke von Kügelgen, Michael Kemper, Allen J. Frank, Berlin : Klaus Schwarz Verlag 1998, 660 pp.; Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia, vol. 3: Arabic, Persian and Turkic Manuscripts (15th-19th Centuries),  edited by Anke von Kügelgen, Aširbek Muminov, Michael Kemper, Berlin : Klaus Schwarz Verlag 2000, 572 pp.

"Tekke Takeovers and Hagiography Writing, 15th to 20 th Centuries:Hajji Bektash, HajjimSultan, Demir Baba and Qaraja Ahmed", in:  Pis'mennye pamiatniki vostoka  (Oriental Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow ), no. 2 (7), 2007, 144-167.