Franz Kogelmann is academic coordinator of the Institute of African Studies (IAS) at Bayreuth University, Germany. He studied Islamic Studies, Anthropology, and History of Africa. In 1997 he received a PhD in Islamic Studies on the Islamic endowment system in Morocco under the French protectorate. His main areas of research are focused on the modern history of Muslim societies as well as contemporary Islamic phenomena in Africa. He has extensive field research experience in Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa. Between 2003 and 2009 he was director of two research projects on Sharia debates in selected African countries (Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania and Kenya). These projects were funded by the Knowledge for Tomorrow – Cooperative Research Projects in Sub-Saharan Africa program of Volkswagen Foundation. In 2008 and 2010, he was also responsible for the DAAD funded Summer Academies "Religion and Order in Africa". Since 2007 he is "principal investigator" of the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies "(BIGSAS). In addition to the supervision of doctoral students in the BIGSAS he has organized a number of workshops and international conferences at African universities. His academic publications cover problems of political Islam, implementation of and/or the debates on Islamic law and the system of Islamic foundations.