Homayra Ziad

Homayra Ziad believes in a world where we can hold irreconcilable differences and yet create beauty together. After graduating from Bryn Mawr College and Yale University, Homayra served as Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at Trinity College in Hartford and then Scholar of Islam at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies, a Baltimore interfaith organization. Most recently, she was Senior Lecturer in Islamic Studies and a community-engaged teaching fellow at Johns Hopkins University, receiving JHU’s teaching award and supporting religious and other diversity efforts on campus. Homayra also served as Board President of the ACLU of Maryland. For two decades, she has co-created projects that connect religion with the arts, public health, and mental health and supported educators, activists, artists, and religious leaders in navigating pluralism and fostering networks of social change. She was founding co-chair of the American Academy of Religion’s Interreligious and Interfaith Studies Group and is co-editor of Words to Live By: Sacred Sources for Interreligious Engagement (Orbis Press, 2018). Homayra grew up in Pakistan, Uganda, and the suburbs of DC, and has spent time in the Middle East, Central Asia and Europe. She lives on the Baltimore harbor with her two kiddos, and loves to write, meditate, be active, and just chill out with her beloved.