## **Trustees' Annual Report for the period**
Period start date Period end date 03 November 2021 15 November 2022
**From**
**To**
## Section A Reference and administration details
**Charity name** British Association for Islamic Studies
**Other names charity is known by** BRAIS
**Registered charity number (if any)** 1196378
**Charity's principal address**
The Middle East Centre
St Anthony’s College 68 Woodstock Road, Oxford Postcode OX2 6JF
**Names of the charity trustees who manage the charity**
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20|**Trustee name**|**Office (if any)**|**Dates acted if not for whole**
**year**|**Name of person (or body) entitled**
**to appoint trustee(if any)**|
|---|---|---|---|---|
||Fozia Bora|Chair|Wholeyear|BRAIS members|
||Tom Lea|Secretary|Wholeyear|BRAIS members|
||Haroon Sidat|Treasurer|Wholeyear|BRAIS members|
||Usaama Al-Azami|Communications
Officer|Whole year|BRAIS members|
||Alyaa Ebbiary|EDI Officer|Wholeyear|BRAIS members|
||Jaan Islam|Events Officer|Wholeyear|BRAIS members|
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**Names of the trustees for the charity, if any, (for example, any custodian trustees)**
**Name Dates acted if not for whole year**
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## **Names and addresses of advisers (Optional information)**
|**Names and addresses of advisers (Optional information)**|**Names and addresses of advisers (Optional information)**|**Names and addresses of advisers (Optional information)**|
|---|---|---|
|**Type of adviser **
**Name**
**Address**|||
|Council Member|Mansur Ali|Cardiff University|
|Council Member|Omar Anchassi|Bern University|
|Council Member|Sariya Cheruvallil-
Contractor|Coventry University|
|Council Member|Robert Gleave|University of Exeter|
|Council Member|Jon Hoover|University of Nottingham|
|Council Member|Hugh Kennedy|SOAS, University of London|
|Council Member|Seán McLoughlin|University of Leeds|
|Council Member|Shamim Miah|University of Huddersfield|
|Council Member|Shuruq Naguib|Lancaster University|
|Council Member|Hilary Kalmbach|University of Sussex|
|Council Member|Frédéric Volpi|University of Edinburgh|
|Council Member|Saeko Yazaki|University of Glasgow|
## **Name of chief executive or names of senior staff members (Optional information)**
**Section B Structure, governance and management**
## **Description of the charity’s trusts**
Type of governing document (eg. trust deed, constitution) How the charity is constituted
Constitution
Association
- (eg. trust, association, company)
Trustee selection methods
Elected by membership
(eg. appointed by, elected by)
## **Additional governance issues (Optional information)**
You **may choose** to include additional information, where relevant, about:
- policies and procedures adopted for the induction and training of trustees;
- the charity’s organisational structure and any wider network with which the charity works;
BRAIS Trustees are supported by a wider Council who offer advice and guidance on an _ad-hoc_ basis. BRAIS hosts a Council Meeting at least once a year, usually online.
BRAIS benefits from a close relationships with the Muslims in Britain Research Network and the British Society for Middle East Studies.
BRAIS’s AGM takes place annually in November and is hosted online.
- relationship with any related parties;
- trustees’ consideration of major risks and the system
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and procedures to manage them.
## **Section C Objectives and activities**
The objects of the Association are the advancement of education for the **Summary of the objects of the** public benefit through the promotion and enhancement of research and **charity set out in its** teaching about Islam and Muslim cultures and societies in UK higher and **governing document** further education.
BRAIS undertakes four main activities for the public benefit and these are listed below. BRAIS Trustees are fully aware of the Charity Commission’s guidance on public benefit and have taken this into account when making any decisions to which the guidance is relevant. At no time over the last year have BRAIS Trustees decided to depart from the guidance. Trustees acknowledge that if they do decide to depart from the guidance, **Summary of the main** they must have good reasons for doing so. **activities undertaken for the public benefit in relation to** Main Activities: **these objects (include within this section the statutory** 1. Providing a forum for academic exchange for scholars with an **declaration that trustees have** interest in any aspect of Islam and the Muslim world, past and **had regard to the guidance** present, including Muslim minority societies; **issued by the Charity Commission on public** 2. The holding of conferences and events; **benefit)**
3. The support of access to archives and information about Islam and the Muslim world;
4. The pursuit of any other activities promoting Islamic studies as the Trustees may decide.
## **Additional details of objectives and activities (Optional information)**
You **may choose** to include further statements, where relevant, about:
- policy on grantmaking;
- policy programme related investment;
- contribution made by volunteers.
BRAIS relies heavily on volunteers to deliver its yearly activities. BRAIS Trustees and Council Members are all volunteers, with additional support provided by our administrative hub at the Alwaleed Centre, University of Edinburgh, and BRAIS’s Projects Coordinator, Sharaiz Chaudhry. BRAIS would like to offer its sincere thanks to all those people who have given so generously of their time over the course of the last year. The Association simply would not be able to function without these essential contributions.
BRAIS will be reinstituting its small grants programme over the next 18 months. Our current policy is to offer grants up to a maximum of £500 for workshops and seminars organised by members.
BRAIS offer student bursaries for PhD students who present at its annual conference. Our current policy is to offer a fee waiver + £100 towards travel and accommodation costs for PhD students.
## Section D Achievements and performance
**Overview Summary of the main** With COVID-19 restrictions finally easing over the course of the past **achievements of the charity** year, 2021/22 saw the British Association for Islamic Studies host its first **during the year** in-person conference in three years at the University of Edinburgh. The seventh annual BRAIS-De Gruyter Prize was awarded to a groundbreaking thesis exploring prophecy in early Muslim theology, and BRAIS
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## Section D Achievements and performance
Officers made significant progress in developing BRAIS’s policy and strategy around Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.
## **BRAIS 2022 at the University of Edinburgh**
BRAIS last hosted an in-person conference in 2019 at the University of Nottingham. The opportunity to meet colleagues and share new research is vital to the development of our field and, for this reason, BRAIS’s annual conference has been sorely missed. We were therefore delighted to welcome over 120 scholars to the University of Edinburgh on Monday 6th and Tuesday 7th June 2022 for a conference that will live long in the memory. There was a palpable sense of joy as colleagues, new and old, came together for two days of memorable panels, papers and keynotes. We would like to express our particular thanks to Professor Salman Sayyid (University of Leeds) who opened the conference with his superb keynote ‘Critical Muslim Studies: Decolonizing the Islamicate?’ We were also delighted to welcome ten leading academic publishers to the conference and we would like to thank everyone who took part for contributing to such a stimulating and programme. Plans are now well underway for BRAIS 2023 which will be hosted in the stunning surroundings of the Aga Khan University’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, London, on Monday 15 and Tuesday 16 May. We are delighted to confirm that the conference will include a keynote panel featuring Professor Sarah Bowen Savant and team members from the AKU’s trailblazing digital humanities project KITAB, alongside Professor Ousmane Kane (Harvard University) who will discuss the challenges of decolonising the study of Islam in Africa.
## **BRAIS De Gruyter Prize 2022**
The seventh round of the BRAIS - De Gruyter Prize in the Study of Islam and the Muslim World attracted some outstanding submissions this year. After considerable deliberation, the Prize Committee awarded the 2022 prize to Elizabeth Grace Price (Yale University) for her submission ‘The Barāhima’s Dilemma: Ibn al-Rāwandī’s Kitāb al-Zumurrud and the Epistemological Turn in the Debate on Prophecy’. The Committee also gave an Honourable Mention to Aziza Shanazarova for her submission ‘A Female Saint in Muslim Polemics: Agha-yi Buzurg and her Legacy in Early Modern Central Asia’. Our sincere congratulations go to Elizabeth and Aziza. BRAIS would like to offer its profound thanks to the Prize Committee as well as all those colleagues who kindly reviewed this year’s submissions. Particular thanks go to Prize Chair, Dr Saeko Yazaki, and Prize Coordinator, Dr Anthony Allison, who dedicated a tremendous amount of time and care to the process. Anthony stepped down as Prize Coordinator this year and we cannot thank him enough for the professionalism and commitment he has shown since he assumed the role.
## **Equality, Diversity and Inclusion**
BRAIS Officers met in Edinburgh for a long overdue Away Day on Thursday 8 September 2022. The primary focus of the discussion was Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), and we are extremely grateful to BRAIS’s EDI Officer, Alyaa Ebbiary, for facilitating our discussions and taking the lead on BRAIS’s EDI agenda. EDI will be a key priority for BRAIS over the next three years, with plans in place to collect EDI data across UK Islamic Studies and produce an EDI strategy within the next 18 months. A sub-group will be convened to take this vital work forward.
## **Section E Financial review**
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**Brief statement of the charity’s policy on reserves**
Our policy is to maintain a reserve of at least £20,000. This is approximate to the yearly running costs of BRAIS assuming an annual conference is delivered.
## **Details of any funds materially in deficit**
N/A
## **Further financial review details (Optional information)**
You **may choose** to include additional information, where relevant about:
- the charity’s principal sources of funds (including any fundraising);
BRAIS is funded through two primary sources:
- 1) Membership subscriptions
- 2) Income from our annual conference
We have ambitions to diversify our funding sources and this will be a priority in the next 18 months.
- how expenditure has supported the key objectives of the charity;
- investment policy and objectives including any ethical investment policy adopted.
## **Section F Other optional information**
## **Section G Declaration**
**The trustees declare that they have approved the trustees’ report above.**
**Signed on behalf of the charity’s trustees**
## **Signature(s)**
||**s trustees**||
|---|---|---|
||||
|**Full name(s)**
**Position (eg Secretary, Chair,**
**etc)**
**Date**|Fozia Bora|Thomas Lea|
||
Chair|Secretary|
||30/08/2023||
||30/08/2023||
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**----- Start of picture text -----**
British Association for Islamic Studies 1196378
Receipts and payments accounts CC16a
For the period Period start date Period end date
To
from 03/11/2021 15/11/2022
Section A Receipts and payments
Unrestricted Restricted Endowment
Total funds Last year
funds funds funds
to the nearest
to the nearest £ to the nearest £ to the nearest £ to the nearest £
£
A1 Receipts
Membership subscriptions 4,372 - - 4,372 -
2022 Conference delegate fees 11,687 - - 11,687 -
2022 Confernece Publisher Exhibition income 3,022 - - 3,022 -
19,080 - - 19,080 8,893
Sub total (Gross income for AR)
A2 Asset and investment sales, (see
table).
- - - -
- - - - -
Sub total - - - - -
Total receipts 19,080 - - 19,080 8,893
A3 Payments
2022 Conference Facilities 4,450 - - 4,450 -
2022 Conference Catering 5,011 - - 5,011 -
2022 Confernece Keynote Expenses 505 - - 505 -
2022 Conference Bursaries 900 - - 900 -
Trustee Expenses (conference and away day)
2,354 - - 2,354 -
Charity consultancy fee 700 - - 700 -
Projects Coordinator fee 2,396 - - 2,396 -
Bank charges 140 140
BRAIS-De Gruyter Prize 1,150 1,150
BRAIS-De Gruyter Prize Coordinator 500 500
TRS-UK Subscription 100 100
Website Redesign 2,880 2,880
Subscription refunds 120 - - 120 -
- - - - -
Sub total [ 21,207 ] - - 21,207 11,312
A4 Asset and investment
purchases, (see table)
- - - -
- - - -
Sub total [ - ] - - - -
Total payments 21,207 - - 21,207 11,312
Net of receipts/(payments) - 2,126 - - - 2,126 - 2,420
A5 Transfers between funds - - - - -
A6 Cash funds last year end 34,318 - - 34,318 36,738
Cash funds this year end 32,192 - - 32,192 34,318
**----- End of picture text -----**
CCXX R1 accounts (SS)
01/09/2023
1
## **Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period**
|**Categories**
Signed by one or two trustees on behalf of
all the trustees
**B5 Liabilities**
**B3 Investment assets**
**B2 Other monetary assets**
**B4 Assets retained for the**
**charity’s own use**
**B1 Cash funds**|
**Details**
**Details**
**Details**
**Details**
**_Total cash funds_**
(agree balances with receipts and payments
account(s))
**Details**
Signature|**Unrestricted**
**funds**
**Restricted**
**funds**
**to nearest £**
**to nearest £**
**32,192**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**32,192**
**-**
OK
OK
**Unrestricted**
**funds**
**Restricted**
**funds**
**to nearest £**
**to nearest £**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**Fund to which**
**asset belongs**
**Cost (optional)**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**Fund to which**
**asset belongs**
**Cost (optional)**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**Fund to which**
**liability relates**
**Amount due**
**(optional)**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
Print Name
Haroon Sidat
Thomas Lea|**Endowment**
**funds**
**to nearest £**
**-**
**-**
**-**|
|---|---|---|---|
||||**-**|
||||OK|
||||**Endowment**
**funds**
**to nearest £**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**Current value**
**(optional)**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**Current value**
**(optional)**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**When due**
**(optional)**
Date of
approval
01/09/2023
31/08/2023|
CCXX R2 accounts (SS)
01/09/2023
2