New Academic Partners

We are pleased to announce the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies (PISAI, Rome), Tangaza University College (TUC, Nairobi), and the Catholic Institute of the Mediterranean (ICM, Marseilles).

Tangaza University College is the academic home of the Institute for Interreligious Dialogue and Islamic Studies (IRDIS). Founded in 2019 to address the increased need for the study of Islam in the East African context dialogue and for cooperation between religions. IRDIS has its remote origins in the one-year program “Islam and Christian Reflection” that was offered in the 1990s at PISAI and was later transferred to Bamako and Nairobi.

Associated with the Catholic University of Lyon, the Catholic Institute of the Mediterranean (Institut catholique de la Méditerranée, ICM) includes two institutes and a professional training center: the Institut de sciences et théologie des religions, the Institut Universitaire Saint-Luc, and the Centre Religion & Laïcité. ICM is also the academic home of Publications Chemins de Dialogue, under the editorial direction of Mgr Jean-Marc Aveline, Archbishop of Marseille and President of the Council for Interreligious Relations at the French Bishops’ Conference.

The PISAI welcomes this new parentship which expresses the Institute’s priorities and the drive to expand networks of collaboration called for by the Apostolic Constitution Veritatis gaudium.