M. (Mònica) Colominas Aparicio, Prof

Mònica Colominas Aparicio received her BA and MA (cum laude) in Arabic language and culture from the University of Amsterdam. She received her PhD from the same university (Department of Religious Studies), funded by the NISIS (Netherlands Interuniversity School for Islamic Studies). Barcelona-born Mònica also graduated in classical guitar (Conservatorium van Amsterdam) and in 2025 she was admitted to the Classical Academy in Groningen.

Her dissertation examined religiously polemical discourses against the Christians and Jews of demo-Muslim minorities (Mudejars and Moriscos) who lived in the Christian areas of the Iberian Peninsula in the late Middle Ages and early modern period. In it, she discussed how these Muslims used polemics to build their identity as Muslims and maintain the cohesion of their communities within a context with a Christian majority. The dissertation was awarded the PhD Dissertation Award from the Amsterdam School of Historical Studies (UvA) in 2016.

During her PhD, Mònica was a representative of the NISIS Junior Research Council and also an external member of the international project CORPI (Conversion, Overlapping, Religiosity, Polemic and Interaction) of the CSIC (Centro Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) in Madrid (ERC Advanced Grant (2013-2019).

Mònica became a Veni Laureate (NWO, 2020-2024) with a project on the conditions of Jews and Christians in al-Andalus (Islamic Iberia, from 711 to 1492). It has examined their social reality and aims to clarify knowledge about the history of minorities in Islamic societies. The project has helped to counter false perceptions about reconciliation of Islam with Western societies and integration of Muslims into the West and to inform public opinion (including documentary Irth, Saudi Broadcast Authority (SBA), with distinguished scholars such as José Miguel Puerta Vílchez: Media Excellence Award, 2023, Saudi National Television and Award Best Documentary Program, 24th Arab Radio and TV Festival, Tunisia).

In August 2020, she joined the Faculty of Religion, Culture and Society as a Rosalind Franklin Fellow in the Department of Christianity and the History of Ideas. In 2023 got she Tenured as Adjunct Hoogleraar (prof. dr.). Her specialty: religious minorities (Muslims, Christians and Jews) in pre-modern Iberia, now with a focus on al-Andalus. She has taught in the BA and MA programs and, since 2023, in the faculty's Erasmus Mundus MA program Religious Diversity in a Globalized World (funded by the EU). She has also taught HOVO courses.

Between 2016-2024, Mònica was affiliated to the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin (Department I, Structural Changes in Systems of Knowledge). First she worked there as a postdoc, and then as a researcher and core member of the inter-institutional MPIWG project "Convivencia: Iberian to Global Dynamics, 500-1750." She is now an MPIWG Visiting Research Scholar, focusing on the use of natural philosophy by the Mudejars and Moriscos in polemical discourses. It should also be mentioned here that Mònica is a member of the SIDE-Cultures interuniversity project (2022-2025, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education) that deals with the semantics of inclusion and exclusion in the Castilian cities of the 14th-15th centuries.

Mònica's publications (see Publications) include two monographs in Brill: The Religious Polemics of the Muslims of Late Medieval Iberia. Identity and Religious Authority in Mudejar Islam [The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World, MEMI, 64], 2018, on the corpus of polemical Muslim literature in the Christian areas of the Iberian Peninsula titled. And in 2024, The Book of Disputation: A Mudejar Religious-Philosophical Treatise Against Christians and Jews (The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World, MEMI, 84). Here she presented a unique “Islamic cosmology” based on natural philosophy that shows how Muslim thought can only be understood in conjunction with that of Christians and Jews. Both publications are available from prestigious institutions and Open Access. The Book of Disputation received the honorable distinction of Best Edition and Translation in The Mediterranean Seminar Prize for the Best Source Edition, Book Translation, or Essay Collection, 2025. Also, an article of hers was chosen as Article of the Month, Abril 2023, by The Mediterranean Seminar.

Mònica is active within the community. In 2020, Mònica became a member of the Board of Directors of NISIS (Netherlands Interuniversity School for Islamic Studies), and in 2022 of the editorial board of Bill's book series The Iberian Religious World. She is also Review Editor of Bill's journal Medieval Encounters, and has gladly accepted being Editor-in-Chief (January 2026). She is also at the Reviewer Board of Religions and Arabic Editor of Open Iberia/America Teaching Anthology.